Street people and pre-attack cues, Part Two or So --somewhere in the middle-- Another post inspired by the Violence Dynamics Boston Seminar

For those who are coming into this series in the middle, in mid-may, more or less, I attended a martial arts seminar in Boston called Violence Dynamics -Boston. Although it was a four day event, I only attended on the third day, a Saturday. There were four instructors, described in an earlier post in this series, flown in from a surprisingly far distance. Tickets for the four days were $450 but one could attend a single day for $175 which I chose to do. (and if I write Buy my Books!! here, the whole thing stands a reasonably chance of being a business expense.) This one's kind of long, but I hope it's worth it. It does contain a valuable lesson.

Context for this Post and Series

As described in the last few posts, the part I found the most fascinating was a session on pre-attack cues taught by Randy King, who was flown in from Canada, and which featured a practice session where people were paired off and practiced accosting each other so that their partner could then practice breaking off contact and avoiding them. Although the attendees enjoyed the session, and many said so, I sort of felt like it missed a few things. It also, oddly enough, get my mental gears spinning as I realized that my days in downtown Schenectady interacting with street people had given me a sale-able, marketable skill if only I were to package it right. Gosh! Things you learn about yourself when you poke around in new places and environments.

In the last post, this one, and the next one (if all goes to plan), I will offer (or have offered) three illustrative stories about dealing with street people. In my last post Street People and pre-attack cues -another post inspired by Violence Dynamics Boston , I told a story of what was basically a mugging that began as an encounter between a neighbor of mine and some street person. I encourage you to read it.

In that post, as well as an earlier one, Violence Dynamics Seminar -Randy King Session -Threat Assessment and Pre-Attack Cues, I offered three rules for how to respond to street people should they take an interest in you. I even explained how Bill Murray, the famous comedian and actor, had used them to avoid me on one occasion. (We have not met since, sadly.)

To review, here are those rules.

1. Avoid unnecessary eye contact. Don't be rude, don't get locked into a straight ahead thing, look around, notice people, but don't focus on them long enough to really get locked into any forced interaction.

2. Avoid creating an unnecessary inter-personal connection. 

3. Keep on walking. 

            In today's lecture, I'm going to offer a situation where those rules didn't really seem to work, and what that teaches us about interacting with street people and/or others who will do you harm or complicate your life.

Background and the Setting

First, to understand this a bit, one really needs to understand the Jay Street pedestrian mall of about a decade and a half ago. It's an environment I described here in the section where I repost an op-ed piece on the area that I had written for the Schenectady paper. Schenectady Street People, Randy King, Paying to Play at Dealing with Street People, and the Boston Violence Dynamics Seminar

Basically, the city of Schenectady had a one block pedestrian mall lined with shops. The intent was originally to have it as the centerpiece of a thriving downtown shopping area, but at this time the downtown was far from thriving and ordinary shopping was not an activity most people associated with  this area. Also, due to poor urban planning, the pedestrian mall found itself located in-between the day center for the homeless and the City Mission's free dinners. Thus homeless and other street people would often use the pedestrian mall as a daily thoroughfare and hang out spot.

A friend mine, the Reverend Tim, had a store on Jay Street where he sold art on commission, pagan religious supplies, and New Age goods, and held pagan religious meetings on weekends. Now, for the record, I am a known critic of most such things but Tim and I were friends and traveled in the same circles. We were both DJs at WRPI non-commercial radio and went to the same parties (in fact, a major part of our relationship was that Tim was very, very good at finding parties and I had a car so we could then go to them).  Tim's one of the most interesting people I know even though we disagree on several things.

I used to stop in and visit Tim regularly on Jay Street for years as it was only about eight blocks from where I lived or so, and we could then wander around the city and go bar hopping and visit open mike's and such. About 2004, I went off to graduate school at Cornell University, three hours away, but would come back to visit from time to time.

Now Tim was, himself, for a bit long before I knew him, homeless himself, and therefore he has always been very friendly and open to the homeless and has enjoyed chatting with them. (Tim loves talking to everyone and genuinely likes most people. It's one of his greatest strengths.)

Which is why this weekend, when I arrived home in Schenectady and stopped in to visit Tim at about 2:00 or 3:00pm on a Saturday afternoon, there were two street people hanging out inside his store, hiding from the heat , sitting on chairs or stools, and enjoying the fans.

Set up for the Encounter 

The first guy was tall, with long blonde scraggly hair and seemed like a decent enough guy. He was chatting and talking about nothing in particular and basically just hanging out and socializing like people of all kinds often like to do. Just a guy who seemed a bit low on sale-able skills and was trying to get by and stay out of trouble who seemed perfectly willing to do what he could to get along with people if they tried to get along with him.

The second guy was the problem. Still light skinned but with dark hair, he mentioned more than once that he was Puerto Rican (not that that was important, except apparently to him), and clearly seemed to be trying to impress with what a dangerous person he was. Not that he appeared particularly dangerous. He was about average size, smaller than me, and not of noticeable build and just didn't seem predatory, but instead merely troublesome. 

One exchange probably sums up his attitude and the flow of this conversation. 

Dark haired guy (with tone intended to impress): "I just got out of prison." 

Blonde haired guy (with tone intended to put him back in his place): "No you didn't. You just got out of the county jail. Stop bragging." 

 Yes, this was a real Schenectady conversation. Soon the Reverend Tim decided he did not want to have this going on in his store and began "adjusting" the fans. i.e. turning them off in the hopes that they would eventually leave.  

I decided, soon enough, that I too would be on my way, and decided to leave. (For the record, I did not feel like I was leaving Tim in any danger. He knew these people, they knew him, and they'd talked before and would undoubtedly speak since this incident.) 

Much to my surprise, the Puerto Rican guy followed me out the door. 

Then he began following me down the street, invading my space, tapping me --no really hitting me or attacking me, just touching me repeatedly --and telling me that he did not like me in various ways. I weighed my options. 

If there was a fight, I felt I probably could have won without too much trouble, but I did not have any desire to get in a fight in the middle of a public street. Despite the problem with street people, the truth is Jay Street had, and still does have, some very nice little shops. There's a good book store, a couple nice coffee shops, a pottery store owned by a potter who made her own goods, and some nice little restaurants. There were people shopping and browsing on the street, including families with kids, middle class people, and it would have been very upsetting to them if a fist fight had broken out in plain view right in front of them. 

And, of course, fighting is never a good thing. Really. You can get your clothes torn, get blood on them, get scratches, cuts, and even bites, and if you're fighting the wrong person (which is most people you have good reason to fight) then it's quite possible you'll spend a great time afterwards worrying about being exposed to diseases, infections, and who knows what. Not to mention the legal problems and complications that tend to come from fighting. 

People say "A fight avoided is a fight won," and to people who've been in fights it is not a cliche. 

On the other hand, if we refer to the concept of "pre-attack indicators" this guy was throwing out an awful lot of them, 

Like following me down the street, poking me in the arm, and calling me names, while invading my body space. 

If one is looking for a list of "pre-attack indicators," this guy was throwing them out all over the place. And intentionally so. Although he never did attack me, he clearly wanted me to see him as a threat. He wanted me to see him as someone who was going to attack. 

For some reason, he had clearly chosen to target me and hassle me that day, although it was a little difficult to know why. I had no idea what he was trying to do but it reached a point where it just couldn't be ignored anymore. 

I turned, stopped, and yelled at him, "If you touch me one more time, I will knock you down." 

And at that point, he backed off and left me alone. 

Aftermath and Lessons Learned 

Since there had never actually been a fight, the police had never become involved and there were no legal consequences. 

I'm not saying I handled it in the best possible way. Other options were possible, like running into a store, screaming fire or for help, or perhaps just turning and fleeing, perhaps even turning around and going back into Tim's store (which would probably have been a very bad idea and led to much prolonged and undesirable drama). So many options were available, and I chose one, but I'm not here to tell you this was the best way to handle this situation. I'm just saying it worked for me that day at that time. 

But let's get to the important issue here, why had this person acted this way? 

It is very strange for a street person to just target someone like that and hassle them, especially without making suggestions or request for money, sex, or other favors or services. 

In some cases, such behavior could be explained by an emotional need for the disenfranchised to show some power in regards to the social classes that they feel are more successful than them or have easier lives, race, racism, and racial tensions (going both ways and different directions between different races and classes) are sometimes an issue (although I do not think it was here)

So what was going on here?

If something is not right try to understand why.

1. Abnormal behavior can indicate an abnormal situation or  a person with an abnormal plan.

2. You can't tell what is abnormal, unless you know what is normal in a given situation.

3. Try to understand what is going on before you commit yourself.

So what had this guy been trying to do? He'd never asked for money, for instance. He'd just begun hassling me. It made no sense.

I did find out later, next time I was in Tim's store. According to the other street person, the tall blonde guy who I spoke to later, once again in Tim's store, this guy's plan had been to provoke me into swinging at him in the middle of Jay Street, in the middle of the afternoon, taking a dive early in the fight, screaming that he was injured, and then suing me. So the guy's plan had been to get me to hit him, and then sue. This was, according to the other guy, something he did. The whole thing had been part of an attempt to get money from me by causing a situation where he could have engaged in a lawsuit. 

Dealing with the Police in Street Situations -Some criminals and troublemakers will set you up and use them against you.

Which brings us to an important aspect of street survival, urban violence, street crime, crime avoidance, and other related matters. Dealing with the police. 

Many of us were raised to see the police as "protectors." If something bad happens, and bad people come, then you call the police, and they will catch the bad people and take them away, and then things will be good again. At least that's the idea we were often raised with. 

In practice, things are more "complicated." The police follow certain rules, habits, and procedures. They tend to respond to certain situations in certain ways, ways they have been trained to act, taught to act, and ways that have worked for them in the past to end situations in a way that they were able to go home at night and return to their families with minimal paperwork and other legal hassles. 

There are limitations on what they can and cannot do. There are ways of acting that they tend to prefer over others.

And over time criminals and bad people often learn these things. 

In the above example, we had a person, a person who had just spent time in jail. And in jail, a large group of people are kept together at close quarters and they chat for hours on end. Sometimes they talk about the laws, crime, police procedures, and how to manipulate the system and the behaviors of the police for their own benefit. Now not all of the information they share is accurate. Anyone who has spent time around people who get arrested a lot will tell you that a large percentage of them are both dishonest and stupid, and the result is that they often spit out a great many just plain unbelievable lies. And the truly stupid among them, sometimes believe they are lies. 

But it's a mistake to forget that many people who are prone to breaking the law also know how to manipulate the system and manipulate the police. 

Often these ways are so obvious to a street person or criminal, yet so completely outside the thinking of most middle class people, that the results can be surprising. i.e. it is not uncommon for a troublesome street person, particularly one who is into drugs, to convince someone to rent them an apartment, pay the first months rent, and then just stop paying. Normally if the landlord follows the law, it will take months for them to go through the small claims process and get them evicted. Meanwhile the problem tenants get a place to live for themselves and any people they invite over to stay without paying anything and they also get to experience the joy of trashing the place and living maintenance free while the landlord screams and cries with few legal options. (But, some might ask, do they not hurt their own reputations? Wouldn't they have trouble getting an apartment in the future? First, while they hurt their reputation among the landlord class, among the squatter class, they've actually gained a wee bit of status because they let their fellow squatters benefit from using the space they've acquired, and, second, these people rarely think of the future much, but, instead, live in the present. It's a different perspective and mentality.)

But, and this is the important lesson here, if the landlord objects, or tries to take the law into his own hands, the police will often arrest the landlord, not the tenants. (Legally this is what the police are expected to do.)

The police in such situations will often enforce the law, and only rarely break the law to help the person who is being harmed. (i.e. "it's a civil matter," they will say.) 

So understand that there are street people out there, who if they approach someone, hassling them, showing "pre-attack indicators" are actually planning to take a dive, scream "my back, my back" (or other imaginary injury), call the police, and then sue for every penny they can get. (Hey, it's easier than working for a living.) I'm not saying it happens much. But it does happen. 

And if you think the police arrest only "bad people," your life experiences have been very different from mine.

The police do not work for you. They work for the government. 

In an earlier post in this series, I alluded to having been arrested. For the record, I was not convicted, but it was, indeed, a major hassle that threw my life and career off track for almost a year resulting in loss of thousands of dollars through lost income, emergency expenses, and legal fees. What happened? Long story short, I got set up by a heroin addict with a long arrest record who I'd made the mistake of renting a room to and he knew the law much better than I did. And he used that knowledge against me, set a trap for me, and, you know what, I played his game every step in the process, did exactly what he expected, because he was thinking a certain way, I was thinking exactly how he expected me to be thinking, and he knew the law better than I did, manipulated me, and I got slammed down hard because of it. 

*[If you have read this series, you will also note that I've repeatedly mentioned that one of the presenters at the Violence Dynamic seminars, Tammy Yard-McCracken, identified herself as a "psychologist" with a Ph.D. when in fact the Ph.D. seems to have been from an unaccredited, on-line school and would not valid for most academic or licensing purposes. (In fact, her Texas therapist license was based on an MS degree, not a PhD, and I have not found other therapist licenses for her at any level in any other state. They may be there. If someone finds one, please let me know, but in the meantime, the issue of whether or not this person is "really" a psychologist would hinge on context and definition of the usage of the word "psychologist."  Why should anyone care? Because feminist trauma therapists with exaggerated credentials have caused a great many unnecessary arrests of innocent people. All one needs to do is look at the tragic mass daycare arrests of the 1980s and 1990s, the Satanic Ritual Abuse Hysteria, the "recovered memory" accusations (now disproven) of that era, and they stand as a warning for today.) Check credentials. Be wary of the system and try to understand it before you act. Look for lies and they lying liars who manipulate the legal system. Then protect yourself as best you can.] 

Update Biographical and Educational Details on Ms. Tammy Yard-McCracken
Credited VS Unaccredited Degrees, licensing, educational standards and the Case of Tammy Yard McCracken, a doctor by some standard but not others

Experts? More Questions about Tammy Yard-McCracken, self described violence dynamic expert

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