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Ex-Prosecutor: THIS is Why Criminals Will Target You
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[Music]
These are the six reasons why criminals
choose to attack and rob people. Are you
going to be the next one? I'm an
ex-state criminal prosecutor, also a
criminal defense attorney. I have been
inside the mind of criminals who have
been very open with me over my decade
plus of experience and thousands of
people talking about why did they choose
this particular person, why did they not
choose that particular person. So, let's
go inside the mind of a criminal. This
video boils down the five ways that they
target you and what you need to know to
fight back.
[Music]
Number one by far, low situational
awareness. What am I talking about? I'm
talking about the fact that somebody's
walking down the street distracted.
Their head is in their phones. They've
got earbuds in whatever else, but they
are not paying attention to their
surroundings. They are in condition
white. They have no idea what's coming
around the corner, what danger is
lurking behind them or closing in from
the other side of the street. This is
where you do not want to be. But this is
exactly what criminals are hunting for.
Why do criminals want someone that's low
situational awareness? Easy. Time.
People who have no situational awareness
lack the time to adequately respond. Why
is that important? Well, it's pretty
obvious. No time means no defense. No
time means no time to draw a firearm. No
time means no time to run. No time to
respond. No time to think, process, or
go. You are on the X, and that's exactly
where they want you. And by the way,
pulling out and using a firearm in
self-defense is exactly what you want to
be doing. About 94% of the time, no
shots are fired when somebody pulls out
a firearm in self-defense. So, not every
defensive gun use involves the discharge
of a firearm. You're still using it
because you're producing it. The bad guy
sees it, but the bad guys, they're not
as dumb as you think they are. They are
getting out of there. Ladies, you are
250% more likely to be seriously injured
if you go along with your attacker
versus if you defend yourself with a
firearm. You are 400%, ladies, 400% more
likely to be injured if you physically
resist an attacker without a gun
compared to if you use a firearm in
self-defense. Gentlemen, it's the same
conclusion, but slightly different math.
You're 140% more likely to be injured if
you go along with your attacker when
we're talking about a robbery versus
using a firearm in self-defense. You are
150% more likely to be injured if you
physically resist without a firearm
versus if you resist with a gun. That's
according to the Department of Justice
National Crime Victimization Survey. And
this happens a lot more than you think
because according to the Center for
Disease Control in 2013 when then
President Barack Obama ordered a study
on the defensive use of firearms in the
United States, upwards of 3 million
defensive gun uses occur annually in the
United States every single year. About
31.1% of gun owners report having used a
firearm in a defensive gun use scenario.
And about
65.9% of those firearms used in
defensive incidents are handguns. What's
the bottom line here? Be aware of your
surroundings don't look like a victim.
Give yourself a fighting chance to draw
your firearm that you've trained on how
to use and you are legally carrying from
an easily accessible location so that
you can get it into the fight to save
your life. Number two, the second
biggest tip that I got speaking to
criminals for years and years and years,
isolation. They don't want other people
to be seeing what's going on because
that is their reactionary gap time we're
talking about. If other good Samaritans,
if cops, if someone else like that were
to get involved, they need to be able to
have enough time to respond typically by
running away. That means that choosing
someone who's isolated, who's away from
the pack, who's in that alley, whatever
the case might be, is going to be
increasing their chances of making a
successful strike. A couple quick tips
that I got from criminals to help you
stay alive. Don't do things like park
where there's no lights. Don't do things
like park on the other side of a
building. For instance, if you go and
shop at a Walmart that may be on a
little bit of an edgier side of town,
park in the main parking lot in front of
the store, not the one that's maybe
around or blocked down if if you can
help to avoid it. If you have to park in
a parking garage, try to get back to
your car and leave when there's going to
be other people there. Don't be the last
one out of the game or whatever it is
that's holding you up and suddenly
you're in an abandoned parking garage.
Try to, of course, travel in groups. Try
not to go alone. They are definitely
hunting the lone target. And remember,
when they're hunting, they're bringing
numbers. They're not looking for a fair
fight. They're not looking for a fight
at all. They're looking for a victim.
Remember, as the good guys, we never
control when and where a fight occurs.
But we can set the table, so to speak,
and do everything possible to stack the
deck with our preparedness, with our
training, with our education, and with
doing these small things that can
actually mean quite a bit when it comes
to adjusting your risk profile. I
appreciate you tuning in. If you just
found us, welcome. We love having you
here. My name is Tom Grieve. I'm an
ex-state prosecutor, criminal defense
attorney. I'd love to hear your thoughts
about all this. What did you find to be
the most interesting? And be sure to
stick around to the end because I'm
going to be sharing some real life
criminal conversation stories that I've
had from back another lifetime. I know
you will find them relevant. So, back to
the show. Number three, predictable
patterns. I know I'm not talking about
evading some sort of Jason Bourne style
assassin or all that kind of stuff like
changing your route to work. If you're a
VIP or someone who might be the target
of kidnapping or abduction, you're not
what we're talking about right now. I'm
talking about the fact that when you go
into a mall or a store, anybody who's
watching you leave that car knows that
reasonably speaking, within the next
half hour to a few hours, you're going
to come back to that car. And there's a
good chance, especially if you're going
into a place like a grocery store, that
you're going to be coming out, pushing a
cart, carrying stuff, maybe on your
phone. You're going to be distracted and
you're going to at some point have to
load that into your car, which will
divide your attention as you focus on
the activity at hand. A parking lot
provides ample hiding spots for a bad
guy or multiple different bad guys to be
able to make sure that you never see
them coming and then they'll wait until
your back is turned. But all this is
keyed off the notion of predictable
patterns. Now, here's the bad news. When
you go into a store, you likely can't
help but come back out and go back to
your car, unless you've got burner cars
or something like that that you can use.
But here's a couple key things. If you
get a bad feeling, there's nothing
stopping you from turning around and
going right back into the store and even
watching from inside to see what's going
on. A lot of stores and shopping malls
do offer some sort of security. And of
course, 911 might be minutes away, but
you've got that time from inside the
store. If whatever reason you don't get
that feeling, but you still need to go
back to your car, okay, that doesn't
mean that as you carry your groceries or
something like that, you have to use
your dominant firearm hand. In other
words, if you're concealed carrying on
your waistband on your, say, 3:00 side
as a righthander, don't carry everything
with your right hand. Keep your phone in
your pocket. Keep your gun hand free and
keep your left hand, the one that's
pushing the card or something like that
with your head on the swivel. You'd be
surprised how many people I have spoken
to who have said that they have called
off attacks because someone looked way
too ready. The most essential part to
number three is the fact that you
understand when you are doing a
predictable pattern because the bad guys
know. And if you understand how they are
hunting, then you will understand when
you are at highest risk of when you're
going to that water hole and all the
lions and all the hyenas are hunting for
you. You got to understand where your
water holes are. Leaving a store from
your car and getting back into that car,
that is a water hole. Be vigilant. Be
alert. That is when you most at risk.
Number four, high reward, low risk. You
see, bad guys want to play the lottery,
but they want to play the lottery that
they think they're going to win way more
times than you or I are going to win
when we go down to the gas station to
get our Powerball or something like
that. What am I talking about? Most
people carry something to pay, something
to call, and something to drive. Okay?
Something to pay, credit cards, cash,
something like that. Something to call
that $500 to $1,000 plus cell phone that
most people are carrying these days. and
something to drive a car, especially if
you're out and about in America outside
of a few particularly urban downtown
major metropolitan centers. Odds are
you've got those three things. Why is
that relevant? Because all three of
those things can be fenced and sold on
the secondary market. You are carrying
thousands and thousands and thousands of
dollars to a criminal who knows how to
leverage it. Obviously, you only attract
more attention and jack up that
riskreward profile for criminals if
you're doing things like wearing fancy
looking watches, things like that. I'm
not saying that your broke homeless
person never gets robbed. I'm just
saying that when they get robbed,
they're not getting robbed for the same
reasons why you are. You're getting
robbed because they think that you're
not going to fight back. You're unaware
of what's going on. you're isolated and
a few other factors, but most of all,
they think that you're worth something
and this is going to be worth the risk.
If you discreetly carry valuables in
public, and I understand that that's not
for everyone, but if you discreetly
carry valuables in public, you're going
to be doing a lot to lower that profile
as you go, so to speak, grayman out and
about in public. Greyman meaning you're
not the person with the flashy watch.
You're not the person with the flashy
this, flashy that. You're just kind of
the gray man that blends in. I once
recall
asking a guy who'd been in and out of
prison a lot of his life, starting as a
juvenile, "What made you choose a
particular liquor store to rob when I
was looking back on his
record?" And he just kind of threw his
head back and laughed and smiled and he
looked at me and he said, "Well, Tom,
that's the one I knew that had all the
cash in the register. That store could
have done a lot more to make sure that
their average till amount was a lot
lower because guess what? The lions are
paying attention to what's in those
registers and they're paying attention
to what's on your wrist and what's in
your pocket. Number five, no immediate
consequences. Consequences come from two
different buckets. One bucket, the guys
in blue, we're talking about 911
response times, all that kind of stuff.
Odds are if you're sticking a gun, a
knife, or whatever in someone's face and
demanding cash, demanding property,
you've been locked up a few times. You
understand response times. Heck, in some
of these neighborhoods, they understand
the response times better than sometimes
people in law enforcement and certainly
prosecutors do in my experience. They
know like a ticking clock in the back of
their mind how long they have to act and
get out of there. But you know what
they're more afraid of than going to
jail? In a study, 57% of felons surveyed
said that they feared armed citizens
more than the police. And there's one
thing that bad guys really don't like.
It's consequences. Another time I was
talking to another career criminal. This
was 10 plus years ago now. I noticed he
had some armed robberies on his record
and I just asked him about the events
because me being a firearm guy, I'd love
to be able to get inside a criminal's
mind to understand, hey, what made you
choose this or that? So, I'd sometimes
look at their record and ask about past
cases because at the end of the day,
this is years behind them. They don't
care about that. And of course, they're
trying to play me as well, so they're
usually happy to go along with it. So
this one guy, he had this armed robbery
and I asked him, "So what was the deal?"
So he robbed some
people. It kind of broad daylight. It
was late afternoon, early evening, and
it was on a major metropolitan downtown
street. I think it was in Milwaukee
somewhere, as I recall. So I asked him,
"Did you just wake up that morning and
decide to rob someone? You just robbed
the first person that you found?" And I
won't repeat exactly what he said. this
as a family program, but the gist to it
went something like this
of he had a pretty good idea he was
going to rob someone that afternoon, but
he had no idea who. And he was just kind
of walking around looking for people,
camped out a little bit, was watching
people pass by. And he was going through
his thought process about how he was
disqualifying people. No, not that one.
No, not those ones. And people, it's
everything I'm talking about right here.
Oh, the group of people don't want that.
Oh, there's a cop on the other side of
the street right now. I'm not going to
do anything at this particular moment.
Now, this incident really happened
before smartphones became a thing, so
there weren't any cell phones to be
talking about, but there were CD
Walkman's and all that kind of stuff.
And he was talking about the fact of
those are sorts of people that he liked
because he also thought that they
carried more cash. And then finally he
found his target of a younishlooking guy
who was all alone and was walking around
kind of distracted, looked a little bit
lost and was just kind of aimlessly
walking with his heads up looking at
buildings and this and that. Perfect
target to sneak up on from behind, which
it sounds like is exactly what he did.
These five points I brought up, they're
not something I read out of a book.
These are something that I have lived
and I have seen as an ex-state
prosecutor and a criminal defense
attorney. These five points are verified
by data points of talking to Lord knows
how many criminals over the years. I
have seen these play out. Don't be a
statistic. Understand where your
watering holes are. Understand where
your funnel points are where if you're
walking on a big sidewalk but all
funnels down to one spot and there's a
couple guys hanging out right there.
That may not be good for you. Understand
concepts like this and I'd be happy to
walk you through. Hit that like button.
Let me know if this is valuable to you
by commenting down below that you want
me to do deeper dives on stuff like this
based on my real world experience. I'd
be happy to do so if enough people are
interested in it. But I cannot emphasize
enough these are realworld tips I'm
giving you, not something that just got
out of a book. Our quote of the day to
reward those of you who made it this far
comes from Heracletus, Greek thinker
philosopher who wrote, "You cannot step
twice into the same river for it's not
the same river and you are not the same
man." is absolutely true every single
time you walk down the street. Keep that
in mind. I appreciate you tuning in.
Look forward to joining you in the
discussion below and I'll see you in the
next one. Thanks for sticking around to
the end of the video. If you enjoyed
this one, please feel free to check out
some of our other great content and
we'll see you in the next one.
[Music]
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