Street People, Pre-Attack Cues, and Street People who Attack or Trick You Without Cues -yet another blog post inspired by the Violence Dynamics Boston Seminar

Over the last few weeks I’ve written several posts about interacting with street people. As stated these were inspired by a session held at an event, a seminar, held in the Boston area called Violence Dynamics Boston. This was a four day event costing $450 to attend for the full length or $175 for one day. I attended a single day, Sunday, and the more I write about it, and the more I use it to publicize my own writing ( BUY MY BOOKS! )the easier it should be to convince the tax people my attendance was a business expense.

The instructors flew in from around the country, one from Canada, to attend this event and were considered leaders in the field (although I confess I was a bit surprised to learn that at least one of them, Tammy Yard-McCracken, was advertising credentials that some would consider misleading. * --perhaps especially so in a milieu where phrases like “awareness is key” and “know your environment” are tossed around pretty regularly. Oh well. C’est la vie. More on this below.)

Which brings me to phase three of the wonderful examples on dealing with real live street people, examples I learned the hard way on the streets of Schenectady (yeah, right . . .  like I’m a tough guy.)

In the last few weeks I’ve offered three rules on avoiding troublesome interactions with street people.

 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. 

If you follow these rules, your likelihood of having a troubling interaction with bothersome street people will be reduced. Really. Try it. Read the previous examples if you’d like.

However, and here’s the rub, the truly troublesome street people will try to find ways to get you not to do these things.

Please reread the above, think about it a little bit, and then read the following true story.

Once upon a time, while walking through Schenectady one evening, I encountered a black man in his early 20s pushing a bicycle down the street. (Should one wonder, the color of his skin actually does become relevant later in this story.)  He was well dressed for the environment, polo shirt and slacks, not jeans, and he called out to me in a non-threatening way.

“Excuse me, can you help me out?” he said as he pushed forward with his bicycle and an expectant smile on his face. “Can you give me directions on how to get home to Clifton Park?”

Now if you look at the map below, you will see that Clifton Park, while not exactly close, is really not that far from Schenectady, a few miles. It is bicycle riding distance, but not an easy bicycle riding distance. And people do drive back and forth all the time when given a reason. However. If you look a the same map,. You will see that it is very difficult to give directions from downtown Schenectady to Clifton Park. There are no simple linear routes, and to get there, especially on a bicycle, would require knowing exactly where to make several turns and changing from one numbered road to another.

Schenectady to Clifton Park --"Ya can't get theyuh from heeyuh."

But, curiously few people realize just how difficult this is when asked out of the blue for directions on how, exactly, to travel this distance. After all, as you can see on the map, it really is not that far.

Which means that the usual result is you would get a bystander suddenly engrossed in trying to puzzle out the best route, exactly, to travel on bicycle from Schenectady to Clifton Park while the man with the bicycle began to tell them the story of why it was, exactly, that he needed to get there on a bicycle and did not know the way.

It’s been several years, but if I recall correctly the story went a bit like this.

He was, he said, a medical student at the Albany Medical Center Medical School (a real place that gives accredited degrees in several fields) who had taken a trip with his wife in his car to Scotia, a nearby town just directly across the Mohawk River from Schenectady, and –for reasons I confess I forget but were quite forgivable and understandable, had had his car impounded by the Scotia police. Now having his car impounded was really inconvenient, especially as his wife, who was now waiting alone by the car in Scotia, he said, was pregnant. But if he could get home, and grab some papers (if I recall correctly) and bring them back to Scotia, then the policed would let him have his car back. This would be a very good thing to happen, he said, because his pregnant wife was in Scotia all alone by the car and it was getting dark.

Now this took several minutes to tell, but while he did the other person would be standing there, mumbling things like “Would route 146 be the best way? I’m not sure how to get onto route 146 from here, exactly, especially on a bicycle. Maybe if you go back into Scotia? Um, uh,  . . .  You know, this is a surprisingly difficult question. I’m not sure I know.“

And it was about that time when the guy would sigh, a great look of resignation and disappointment would come over him, and he would say “It’s that tought, huh? Maybe I can’t get there on a bicycle. And with my wife and all . . . Hey, do you think maybe you could spare me some money for a taxi?”

The (Rather Obvious) Lessons

Remember those rules above?

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 the above case, the beggar, who in fairness may or may not have been a street person but he clearly was a beggar as I ran into him as he used this ploy on three separate occasions and heard a story about him using a different ploy to try and get money on a fourth, had, rather cleverly, caused normally suspicious people to set their wariness aside by appearing to be something he was not and then distracting them further with an innocuous appearing, yet surprisingly complicated puzzle that he asked people to solve, thus distracting them further.

This situation caused people to set aside their concerns, and before they knew it they were either handing over some money to “help the guy out” or else upset with themselves or him because they had had much of their time wasted and realized they had been tricked and misled.

And it’s not uncommon for beggars to hide their status as beggars when soliciting donations. At bus or train stations, it is not uncommon for beggars to pretend to be stranded travelers in order to get home. Others pretend to be veterans or crippled, when they aren’t. Others pretend to be affiliated with charities or religious group (or hide their affiliation with religious groups). Fake Buddhist monks soliciting, even demanding, donations are a nuisance in many Chinese cities and increasingly so in major US cities.

This is the way some predators work. They hide their intentions, they hide who they are, and through this means they take advantage of their prey to get what they want.

While it might sound a bit exaggerated to refer to this man, a beggar, as a “predator,” the lesson remains. Subterfuge, disguise, and deception are how many predators including serious, life-threatening, and merely irritating and bothersome predators, take advantage of their targets.

Ted Bundy, the serial killer, often wore a sling, feigning an injured arm, and asking women to help him change a tire on his car, before striking at them from surprise as they focused on helping him, and then rewarding their aid with rape, torture, and death.  Other rapists and serial killers and others have done so as well. Most con-men operate by at some point gaining their victims trust and then betraying it.

While personally, I think it’s best not to obsess over these behaviors, you have a duty to yourself to remember that such things happen and keep some awareness that they are possible and might happen to you or those you care about.

 

My Reaction

Now it should be obvious from some of my posts on this blog that I am not always the coolest person around sometimes.

And this guy annoyed me.

Clearly, he had brains, talent, charisma, communication skills, a good understanding of people and psychology. Clearly, he could be doing something more to help the world, help society, help his people, than merely tricking people into handing him a few bucks by pretending to be lost.

And the first time, I ran into him, I just looked disgusted, turned and walked away.

The second time, he didn’t remember me, began his spiel again, and I lost my temper and began telling him what I thought of him. He was worried, I’d attack him, and left. (I wasn’t planning to attack him. I just told him, he should be doing other things with himself instead of this.)   

The third time was more interesting.

Now, for the record, I am not advocating that anyone copy any of the behaviors I use here.

Remember, I am, at best an intellectual with some insights that you might find useful, and, most certainly, would not set me up as a role model for anyone. But this is what happened and perhaps you will find it amusing.

SO . . .

One day I was walking to work. At this point, I had a job as a security guard in downtown Schenectady but was pursuing (not terribly successfully) my goal of becoming a writer. Therefore, I had a large laptop computer in a carrying case on a large strap slung over my shoulder and a second backpack with my books, lunch, and other things I would need to get me through my evening shift from 3:00pm to 11:00pm. I was wondering through, yup, you guessed it, the Jay Street pedestrian mall, when I saw two young White folks somewhere around college age talking to this guy, the same guy, the young, well dressed Black guy (As stated, his race shall actually become important shortly in this story. Therefore, I include it.)

And of those folks, a confused look upon his face, turns to me and asks, “Hey, do you know how to get Clifton Park from here?”

And I just sort of gave a mean-spirited laugh and said, “Don’t tell me. His pregnant wife is in Scotia, his car got impounded, and he’s an Albany Medical Student, right? And in a few minutes he’s going to ask you for cab fare.”

At the point, the beggar cried, “Why you!,” the two young White folks broke off the conversation, and he came shuffling towards me, angry and threatening looking like he planned to attack me. As he approached ready to attack he called me a racist and screamed about racism and how everyone in this city was a racist.

Now perhaps he really did plan to attack me, or perhaps he assumed that I would turn and run away, truth is he was probably so shocked and angry at being exposed that he did not really know what he planned to do himself, but what I did instead, and I am not advocating this --remember, I am many things, but I am NOT a role model for anyone, please learn from my mistakes not my example—instead, I shuffled back a bit, got ready for a fight, and lined up to swing and swing hard with the big heavy laptop on the long straps (this was a laptop in a metal case, not a plastic one, this was a while back).

And he could see that so he’d step back, scream more accusations of racism and then shuffle to the side to try and sneak around me, while I’d turn and line up on him again, still ready for a strike.

This was making a lot of noise and people were, wisely, avoiding this drama and trying to stay away.

Except, of course, the Reverend Tim who came out of his store, strutting over, to see if he might be able to play the role of peace maker, something he likes to do, and defuse the situation. “Gentlemen, Gentlemen. I am the Reverend Timothy _________, local Jay Street business owner. What seems to be the problem?” And he looked at the well dressed beggar, then he looked at me, then he realized it was me. “Pete?!”

The Black guy sputtered a bit, then turned, then got on his bicycle, still sputtering about me and the rest of the city being racist, started peddling away at high speed, only to turn, stare at me, and scream “N*gger!”

Which was quite interesting because I am White. (See, I said the racial identifiers would come into the story at some point). This is the one and only time I have ever heard of a White person being called N*gger. I’ve asked people about this and even with clarifying questions (“Are you sure he said ‘n*gger’ or ‘nigga’?”) no one I’ve met really could explain it without digging into psychological explanations. And if there’s a moral or lesson to this odd use of language, well, I, for one, have no idea what it is.

If there is a lesson here, aside from being aware or alert to the idea that some beggars (and other more dangerous predatory types) disguise who they are, it could be that if you interfere with a person’s livelihood (or perhaps in some cases a drug addict’s chance of getting a fix) then they will become angry and in some cases violent.

This is not the only time, I have had a beggar threaten me or become threatening when I have interfered with their begging. (Not that I do this much, and not that I even have an interesting story because of it. Essentially, I was in Boston, on my way home, near the main bus station, and a beggar who I’d seen before was switching from pleading with a suburban looking woman who was sitting in front of the bus station, to trying to intimidate her into giving him money. I just stood there not too far away, watching, and he turned to me and told me to mind my own business, I indicated I had no plans to leave, and then he began calling me names, “hero” and “do-gooder” and so on among them, and then wandered off, sputtering to go bother someone else. Just FYI, he did not appear terribly intimidating, looking both mentally and physically weak, and there was lots of distance between us so I did not feel like I was really in any real danger.)

And if you’ve read this, and the two before it, https://peterhuston.blogspot.com/2018/06/in-late-may-i-attended-event-called.html and  https://peterhuston.blogspot.com/2018/07/street-people-and-pre-attack-cues-part.html or the entire series ( https://peterhuston.blogspot.com/search/label/Violence%20Dynamics%20Seminar ) then hopefully you’ve got a better understanding of how to deal with street people.

*

About this point, people will be starting to say “Pete, what’s your problem with Tammy Yard -McCracken? Don’t you think you’re overdoing it?” Okay, obviously, there was a problem between us the day I attended. During this interaction, I felt that her behavior was “off” and found it doubtful that she could possibly be a licensed psychologist in good standing. Instead, my impression was that she was acting like someone pretending to be a psychologist to manipulate others and gain power over them.

That inspired me to do a quick background check into who she was and, as stated, and very quickly real problems in her credentials as a psychologist emerged. It did not take long to find out that there is a discrepancy between how she represents herself and the terms she uses to describe herself and how most people who are licensed as psychologist would use those terms.

But I deal with problem people regularly and normally shrug these interactions off. The issue here is that most of the people who I have problems with, the people I shrug off, are not, for instance, testifying for the defense as an “expert witness” at police brutality trials and giving presentations to people who think they are getting a presentation from someone who has the credentials and accomplishments normally associated with a licensed PhD psychologist who has completed an accredited graduate level program in the field of psychology.

But don’t listen to me. PLEASE do not believe anything I say or take me at my word. Instead, I encourage people to do their own background check on her. Verify things. Dig deeper. It just gets weirder.

i.e. she has advertised herself as adjunct faculty at Argosy University. I recommend you do research into Argosy University and its psychology program. When I did a google search ( https://www.google.com/search?q=Argosy+university+controveries+and+law+suits+and+accreditation&rlz=1C1JZAP_enUS798US798&oq=Argosy+university+controveries+and+law+suits+and+accreditation&aqs=chrome..69i57.20864j0j7&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8 ) I quickly found this ( http://www.apa.org/monitor/2014/02/argosy.aspx ).

The APA is a very important organization in psychology (and, interestingly, has had a major effect on academic writing standards as well).

Or try to find out which years she was doing psychotherapy as a licensed psychotherapist and which years she was doing "life coaching." Then check into the differences between the two things. Like I said, it's interesting and a pattern emerges fairly quickly.

But as for my ethics in this matter, let me say, I’ve done a lot of work in several different fields and one of them is journalism.  In this field my professional goals have been to, first, bring the truth to light and present it to the general public, and, second, when in doubt work to comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable. 

But like I said, do your own background check on this person, but dig below the surface, don't just look at the credentials, look into the quality of each and every credential and where and when it would be useful. Again, check the quality of the credentials. The results are interesting.  

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