Protecting Yourself Against Crime and Violence

Resilient Life Public Resilient Life
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The statistics on crime reduction, if true, are very good news. Of course those are only the crimes being reported, obviously the rates are always higher as many victims choose not to call the police for various reasons.
However, anecdotally every bank within a five block radius north of my office has been robbed in broad daylight since the recession began (four out of four) and one of two down the street from my home so far.  I think there are 3 different perpetrators overall and fortunately no one was hurt. Still, this is very unusual in my memory.

Also, bank robberies in the New York City area are at an all time high (I live near New York City)

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/14/nyregion/14bank.html

"But if the frequency and ease of bank robberies in the city have been striking — the number is up 46 percent compared with the same time last year — the lineup of those arrested for holding up banks has been interesting as well.

In April, a rookie New York City police officer was charged with three bank robberies, including two last year at the same Sovereign branch in Manhattan. Last month, a retired New York City detective was charged after the authorities said he had pulled off a string of bank robberies in recent months. And two sisters once sent their young daughters to a teller with a note announcing a robbery and used the proceeds to buy flat-screen televisions."

42

[quote=fiatagogo]Freakonomics suggests that crime rates have decreased with the advent of birth control.
Other studies http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I5KMmN7hrmE indicate that happiness is relative and we might want to consider how future welfare /entitlement cuts are presented.  A we’re all in this together approach involving community might be crucial to reduce how deprived people feel. 
Some of the books presented in this excellent article look very interesting. Looking forward to checking them out!
[/quote]
Actually Freakonomics suggested that the crime rate started to decrease in the early 90’s because of Roe vs Wade. Basically, all the children that were being aborted were never born, and therefore were never born into an unwanted situation where they were more likely to become criminals. The crime rate started to decline about 20 years after Roe v Wade, just as those kids would be reaching their peak crime years.
Having said that, I still think crime rates will rise in the next twenty years, given what we all know is coming. I used to live in Panama in the 80’s and the people were nice people, not unlike anyone else, but if you went to the beach, and left your towel, it would be gone in minutes. All the houses had bars on the windows, and most had large dogs. If you didn’t you would eventually have a burglar in your house, we did. We got bars the next week. We lived next to a church that was broken into. During the robbery, our dog was going crazy, so my dad let him out, not knowing what was going on. He scared off the thieves. The priest loved that dog more than me. We lived in a pretty “nice” area.
My point is that if you have pervasive poverty, but you are prepared financially, you and your wealth and belongings will be a target. Americans are no better ethically than Panamainians. I could argue that we will be much worse. I am currently armed and trained, with an alarm system. My alarm is wireless, no phone line to cut, and the power source is my battery backup, so you can’t cut the power outside to disable. I am looking at adding bars to my windows. That might be a good business in the future. No dog yet, but I’m considering it.
Thanks
Phil
 
 

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[quote=ao]Thanks but did I miss something?  The document I found only goes to page 15.
Anyway, what you state is consistent with crime matching adverse economic circumstances.  The worst period economically was 1929 to the early 1930s.
http://stockcharts.com/charts/historical/djia1900.html
The years of the mid to late 30s and WW 2 were simply sequelae of that earlier, more economically traumatic period.
[/quote]
 
It’s an excerpt – the relevant graph is five or six pages in, but it bears the page number 38 at the bottom.  Sorry for the confusion.

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[quote=zeroenergy21] 
Having said that, I still think crime rates will rise in the next twenty years, given what we all know is coming. I used to live in Panama in the 80’s and the people were nice people, not unlike anyone else, but if you went to the beach, and left your towel, it would be gone in minutes. All the houses had bars on the windows, and most had large dogs. If you didn’t you would eventually have a burglar in your house, we did. We got bars the next week. We lived next to a church that was broken into. During the robbery, our dog was going crazy, so my dad let him out, not knowing what was going on. He scared off the thieves. The priest loved that dog more than me. We lived in a pretty “nice” area.
My point is that if you have pervasive poverty, but you are prepared financially, you and your wealth and belongings will be a target. Americans are no better ethically than Panamainians. I could argue that we will be much worse. I am currently armed and trained, with an alarm system. My alarm is wireless, no phone line to cut, and the power source is my battery backup, so you can’t cut the power outside to disable. I am looking at adding bars to my windows. That might be a good business in the future. No dog yet, but I’m considering it.
Thanks
Phil
[/quote]
I have a couple aunts living in a poor neighborhood in Belize City, Belize, where my father grew up.  They are nuns.  One thing the have always had in that neighborhood is a big mean dog.  I highly recommend one if you can care for it – even one that’s not big and mean will make a lot of noise and send an erstwhile burglar elsewhere.
The other thing they have is community – everyone knows them, and that they don’t have anything of value.   As you mention, you can learn a lot about survival living in a place like that.
And you are right – when a place gets really poor, its bound to have more crime.  The other big factor is how young the population is.  Younger populations typically have more crime.  I don’t see many truly third world - type neighborhoods in the U.S. (I can show you some in DC), but there may be more in the future.  But I think the “abandoned city” (see Detroit) will be the more common archetype in our near future.

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You guys have obviously never met bad guys.Good luck.
 
CS

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+1.
Violent offenders are often brutish and lacking in complexity, but they more than make up for it in willingness to do violence. It can’t be understated that their will to survive and take what is yours is probably greater than your will to defend it. 

If for no other reason, simply because they’re more used to the conditions that create desperation. 

We can pour over statistics all day, but we’d be far better off investing this time into some training, planning for the worst case scenarios and discussing with your family/neighbors what you’d do in a collapsed economy to keep one another safe and alive.

Cheers,

Aaron

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Citizen111 asked, 

"thc and others in this situation, I would appreciate hearing more from you on your thoughts about security in a rural environment, since you mentioned that as a tradeoff. What are things to watch out for, and how to guard against them?"

 

My experience and expertise is in the large urban setting.  I point to the experience and knowledge of others about security in rural areas, and what I've learned from them is that there are definite security disadvantages.  (See Aguirre - Surviving the Economic Collapse, starting at p. 34). 

1. Police and fire response is much slower in normal times, and will be even slower in the collapse.

2. Neighbors rarely live close enough to see or hear mischief at your place and either come to help you or call for help.

3. Economic refugees can be expected, and may be desperate and overwhelming.  (However horrific our urban problems will be, we likely won't have to deal with an INFLUX of needy people!)

4. Even if you and the neighbors get together to patrol your area (an excellent idea in any crisis in any region), there will be a large amount of land to cover and you can't be everywhere at once.

5. Rural areas in Argentina, Rhodesia and others during their crises experienced some increased crime patterns that are thankfully rare in normal times but quite chilling in their scope and brutality.  Home invasion robberies (sometimes conducted/led by men with military and/or police experience), highway checkpoints (robberies, kidnappings, murders), kidnappings for ransom as a career path (think Mexico), and a group of people simply moving into your house while you're at work or vacation and defending it as their own by force of arms (who would/could evict them in a collapse?).  If the bad guys know the police won't be coming at all (or any time soon), they're emboldened.  

These are some of the reasons rural people with some economic means in those situations live in COMPOUNDS, not homes (defensive walls surrounding the residence, bars on the windows, escape tunnels, bullet proof walls, safe rooms, electronic defenses, plenty of weapons and ammo, and the compound is never left vacant without armed family members or employees to guard it).  The worst case scenarios to me were illustrated in Rhodesia where land owners and their employees who refused to allow their land and property to be appropriated by mobs essentially fought small scale military battles (squad/platoon size engagements) trying to save themselves and what was theirs.

 

The need to fortify your home and property, take up arms and the appropriate training, and form local self-defense relationships seems to me MORE important in rural areas where you're more on your own.  Check out the books I mentioned by Aguirre and Morris, and look for my second post at a future date.

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I’m following…

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[quote=Poet]

[quote=thc0655]

Check out this video of the polite, nicely dressed, apparently upper middle class man robbing a convenience store at gunpoint because he's fallen on hard times.  I don't accept his rationale or behavior, but I see where he's coming from.  The robbery starts at about 5:43 into the video.

http://inflation.us/videos.html

[/quote]

Thc0655

Prepared Thank you for the link. I saw this other one on the same page... About a water shortage in New England where people fought over water and emptied the shelves FAST!

Empty Store Shelves Coming To America http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BIVVL43qPXY

Just imagine if this were a nationwide problem, not just localized to one small area.

Protected That said, I wanted to share something I read in a copy of Mother Earth News, sent in by a reader as a comment to an article about emergency survival kits:

[quote]

"...Back in 2003 when hurricane Isabel tore up central Virginia, we were without power (other than our small generator) for almost two weeks. We had to run off people, many times at gunpoint, who were attempting to steal our food and our generator. One fellow killed one of our goats inside our barn. I held a handgun on him until the police arrived, one and a half hours later. Funny thing is, if he had asked, we would have gladly shared with him." - Kevin Newman, Richmond, Virginia Mother Earth News, Issue No. 244, February/March 2011, page 8

[/quote]

Poet

[/quote]

50

Yes, the water main break was a few hours from me. Ironically, a “green” selectman there was about to get a law passed outlawing plastic water bottles. Good intent, bad timing.When I lived in Dallas years ago, a rare power outage knocked out electricity for a few weeks. I went to a hardware store the first day to buy lamp oil and found it mobbed with people looking for the same item. Two families had gotten there first and filled shopping carts with literally many dozens of bottles of the oil, much more than they could use in a decade in Dallas, and emptied the store. Unlike the goat owner, they refused to part with even one bottle to any pleading folks.
Unlike in the play Tea and Sympathy (forget heroine’s name), “relying on the kindness of strangers” does not always work.
 
CS

51

Hmmmm?  I wonder if the same kind of panic buying might empty your local gun store before people could get there and buy something they’ve been putting off?!  Or if your state’s waiting period might leave some people unarmed when the mob/criminal showed up…

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The ability to use it with any manner of efficiency.
To this day, I remember the first iteration of Force on Force training I did with Simunitions… We had to chase down and capture an “Active Shooter” who popped a guy laying suping just as we entered the building, and upon engaging, I fired 5/6 shots. I remember scanning and grabbing at my magazine pouch, but it was rigid as hell and I couldn’t get it open because I was caught cycling between:
a. Reload now and be distracted from the possiblility of other threats while my team-mates were covering me, and;
b. Chancing having only one shot rather than distracting myself from the threats by reloading.
It was nerve rattling and gave me an opportunity to spot a “weakness” in my game - I hadn’t considered being left in such a position up until that point. I also ended up shooting “hostages” in a Hospital Standoff - they came running out screaming and two got popped before I cycled through my OODA loop fast enough to get my bearings. Huge failure.

I see a lot of “armed” citizens who have talisman firearms getting over-run and donating their firearms to the severely EDP’s that have the moxy to break in and hurt whoever they want in a show of force and desperation.

Right up there with the equipment is going to be the sheepdog him/herself, and the level of training and ability that they have to pass on to others.

Cheers,

Aaron

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Thank you thc0655 and others who have written in this post.  I don’t care how scary it is.  My eyes are wide open.  You are telling the truth and I really appreciate it.    Looking forward to your next post, especially about rural protection.  By the way, last week I listened to the Lifeboat Hour and this guy Jim Rawles or something like that said he expected a 70-80% mortality rate in cities and suburbs.  Is this realistic?

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No. 
Definitely not realistic, but IMHO, nothing he says is. 
Rawles is a “for profit” survivalist, and his ‘advice’ and novels are for entertainment purposes only.
Has he substantiated this with any particular facts or figures? Rawles (et al) fail to take into account that the mortality rate will actually be 100%.
Given enough time, we’re all dead.
So it’s utterly meaningless to say “I’m predicting 70-80% dead!” - because that’s extremely optimistic. That means 20-30% of the population is immortal, unless you give this some meaning by adding a timeline. 

So, even if we do, we need to consider there are thousands of suburbs across the U.S., and in order to take lives, you must risk lives. Most people over-estimate how violent criminals “attack” their prey, and their own willingness to die in the process. 

It’s not a matter of a raiding war party (which admittedly, could happen) as much as “targets of opportunity”. To say that 70-80% of the Suburban/Urban population will die is a bit extraneous and dismissive. Bad guys do the things they do because, like you and I, they want to live. It’s simply preferable to them to take our stuff rather than work for it.

U.S. Urban Population (2000): 222,361,000

70% would be 155,652,700 dead.
80% would be  177,888,800 dead.

That would be over half of the U.S. Population in either case, according to the World population clock, we’re at a shade under 311,000,000 as of 7 Mar 2011. 

Everyone has their own opinion, but I’m predicting 100% mortality rate for all of us.
That said, I highly doubt it’ll be concentrated in the “Urban/Suburban” areas over the span of a few years. 

Cheers,

Aaron

http://www.census.gov/compendia/statab/2011/tables/11s0029.pdf 

http://www.census.gov/main/www/popclock.html

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I’ve mentioned some of this before, so it may sound repeticious to some.  I live in a “hamlet”, so named because it has no political bodies or official designation.  It is a small settlement that at one time was a village, but has since been reduced to a couple hundred (at most) people in a geographically small area, surrounded by forest and a few farms with a couple hundred more people living in a more scattered pattern. 
In the 18 years I’ve lived there, I am aware of only one possibly pro crime.  A fellow who collects guns was burgled when he wasn’t home, and most if not all his guns were taken.  As far as I know no one was ever caught.  Other than that, our only problems are garden variety drunk and high driving, the occasional domestic incident and stupid stunts by stupid kids.

I am not terribly afraid of marauders coming from the nearest city (45 miles away) to terrorize our hamlet.  Nearly everyone is armed and most have handgun permits with handguns.  Most know each other and I’m confident we could organize fairly quickly if there were ever a perceived threat.  We also have the advantage of familiarity with the ground.  We have roamed and hunted the woods and fields, and have pretty good idea where everyone’s property lines are.  When something out of the ordinary happens, word spreads fast.  And, many of us are members of the volunteer fire company, so there is an obvious interest in quick response.  I doubt any violent incursion would happen more than once.

Doug

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Not anamolies, but these gangsters were a tiny minority of the population who got a lot of press.  Just like your local TV news makes it seem as if there is a constant crime wave, when in reality crime has been going down in the USA for many years.  I think in the depression of the 30s there was a lot of people helping each other.  Read Studs Terkel’s book on the great depression sometime, which has a lot of good oral history.

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http://www.thestar.com/news/article/1000500--crime-spikes-in-cities-with-police-layoffs

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I hesitate to restate what seems obvious (to me, at least) but our decaying economic and moral conditions are causing crime we’ve often convinced ourselves will always be confined to urban areas to continue spreading outward.  You have to consider the probability that as we continue down the road we’re on, that it’s coming to a community near you.  The following post contains news from around the country about “wildings” (formerly the word of choice would’ve been “riots”) in which gangs or 30-200 teens and young adults coordinate attacks on a specific place through the use of social media.  Of course these “events” were pioneered in urban centers, including here in Philadelphia, but they’re spreading outward.  Some of the areas most affected in the early stages of this trend are places where armed self-defense is either illegal or “frowned upon” by police, district attorneys, and judges.  But its spreading.  Follow the links for an interesting “ride.”
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/janet-tavakoli/third-world-america-2011_b_873200.html

 

 

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Living in Los Angeles and driving past many barred windows has really helped this article speak to me on a very personal level. When I moved to Los Angeles a few years ago I didn’t believe that I could be one of the people that would ever need any sort of personal security plan or system and moved into a bottom floor apartment that (fortunately) had bars on the windows and a deadbolt on the door. Nonetheless, if a criminal is looking for weaknesses in the sort of neighborhood I lived in at the time, a deadbolt and bars isn’t going to stop them. All they have to do was look through my side window and notice that I didn’t have any of the reputable home security systems installed, yet still had a 42 inch plasma TV installed on my wall. One day, while I was at work, my neighbor called me and told me that my window had been smashed through the bars, and they were able to unlock my nearby deadbolt to then access my home and take my TV, jewelry, and other expensive items. Long story short, thanks for this article! No more being a victim!