Andrea Contents
The armed robbery of your wallet.
Give me your wallet or I’m going to kill you!
The robbery and threat with the purpose of taking your wallet, your watch, your smartphone,your computer, your bag, your signed vest, etc.
The portfolio is a practical example for a common form of crime.
Here you are in the middle of a robbery.
One of the questions that are often asked is whether in case of threat for robbery hand over your wallet or act!
Giving an absolute answer is not possible because it should always be placed in a context but in principle the best choice if the goal of the attacker is to have the money in your pocket is to give him what he wants.
Giving him the wallet or purse theoretically makes him move away from you and consequently you get out of a dangerous condition especially because as often happens the threat always occurs with an equalizer such as a knife, box cutter, firearm, other.
Thanks to the Facebook page, Instagram, and the email I happen to have exchanges of opinions with other experts in the field or people who work in the field of security.
This is useful to be able to evaluate together both the technical/didactic approach and the thoughts or thoughts about self-defense and self-protection when you are in an instant in that condition of having to decide,making the best choice.
Translated in a nutshell, the search for the choice that makes us bring the skin home.
Talking about the condition of an assault for the purpose of robbery, the idea of handing over your wallet or bag to a robber or thief rather than responding immediately with a counter-aggression response.
Performing a disarmament or an immediate “violent counterattack” triggers a whole series of elements and variables that I do not think can give an absolute answer.
The situational approach
The fundamental thing to be able to have a correct and consistent situational approach in dealing with dangerous situations in real life, whatever particular situation you face.
By situational approach I mean all those elements as a place, whether you are alone or with your family, your physical state, your mental state, clothing, the type of attacker, the actual loss of the requested object, etc.
I realized as our conversation developed that there were things that I hadn’t necessarily emphasized or things that I hadn’t attracted enough attention to;
Firstly, handing over your wallet when required is not a passive deed, but it is assertive, which means I do not agree but I give it to you to avoid both bad consequences.
In the face of an armed attacker (of a gun or knife) you can not underestimate the effect of strong stress that generates and that will probably make you stay surprised and frozen.
Time coverage
Now that your intention is to hand over your wallet or bag a key element is to have a time hedging strategy.
The time coverage strategy is that verbal or physical action or a mix of the two that buys you time and confirms to the robber that you are going to comply with his request regardless of whether you actually do it or that it is just the way to find the space to attack fiercely.
This is an essential strategy in many contexts of aggression including this one.
You have to agree to hand over your wallet or bag even if this is not your intention because that “space” allows you to have a moment to try to understand and evaluate the situation.
Attention we’re talking about actions that last a few seconds it’s not that you’ll be talking to them for minutes because a robber is in a hurry!
All criminals from the moment they start the crime are limited in time because the purpose is quick and easy both for the surprise towards the victim who can not think of it and to avoid being seen by other passers-by.
If you slow down the assault, this allows you time to better understand the situation but the difficult part is that this action is necessary to do without causing your attacker to act violently towards you.
Beware at this point you probably won’t be sure yet if your attacker is alone or an accomplice nearby or where your potential exits and escape routes are to escape, etc.
The non-thinking
When I talk to you about time coverage to take time to understand the situation and related elements I’m not talking to you about using the thought process or your reasoning to evaluate what’s happening because it’s not what you need.
Your thought and reasoning is used to create the “moment” that your “instinct” needs to receive the start to act.
Acting can mean several things:
- Give your wallet or purse
- Attack
- Escape
Attention!
Standing still, motionless, frozen without doing any action is very dangerous because the effect is like arguing with someone very and the one in front is quiet without doing anything.
This behavior can result in a violent action to the attacker that if limited to snatching your purse or taking your wallet is fine but it can also be hitting you and then taking the items.
Because I tell you about instinct, the reason is that you won’t be as lucid as you think and the answer will be dictated by a feeling that is built by elements like your physical state, your mental state, your martial training, context, etc.
Your instincts will guide you through fear to tell your body what to do.
If your instinct tells you run away, run, if it says take the knife do it, if it says give him the wallet take it and reach out to him.
Now an important element, all 3 answers can be “covered” with the action hand over the wallet, because it is much easier to look for the knife when an attacker is focusing on your wallet than when you are focusing on the knife.
If your instinct tells you that you have to control the knife, you have to give yourself the best chance by going to answer the question of your robbers with a nice yes, keep your wallet, you have to give the impression of being the perfect victim and at that moment unleash fury.
Ps. I do not recommend it if it is something that you can recover or buy back, remember that the purpose is always to preserve yourself and bring the skin home.
The biggest fear of a robber but in general of a thief is to be caught so they want to get away from you as soon as his wallet or purse is handed over.
If there is any hesitation or pause on the part of the aggressor you have to fill that empty space by attacking.
The instinct to act on a robbery
Again your fear instinct if you give him space (passing through the wallet delivery movement) will tell you when to act.
You will know if they are going to leave before he leaves because he will rip your wallet out of your hands and run away or walk away quickly while if he stays in front of you putting it in his pocket, then be careful because he still wants something.
In this case or attack immediately or run away, you can’t stay passive waiting for the next request because it will be worse than the first.
So if you deliver the requested item and they move away well!.
All right, the danger has escaped, go and make the complaint but you’ll know before they do it if you have to act,
An additional condition that you absolutely must avoid, you hand over the wallet, the thief walks away and you follow him to attack him behind or in other ways.
Don’t ever do that!
If you decide to attack him, don’t wait for it to move away before you start acting.
Remember that you have to preserve yourself and bring the skin home, if the danger has escaped it is fine.
Getting in the car taking the crick, or pulling out a screwdriver or knife you had in your pocket (illegal) and chasing it to retrieve your wallet is not the best choice.
Gym training for these specific cases of robbery
I think this is one of the most interesting parts for you, which is how to train/simulate this condition.
There are many ways but surely in the tutorials you can perform two different responses of the attacker.
You have a person who pulls a knife and makes you a threat, eg. they ask for a wallet while pointing the knife at you.
The choice of where to point it varies, it is never the same because you do not have to get used to a condition even if at the beginning to learn the first dynamics you choose where to point the weapon.
Sometimes when you deliver your wallet, the attacker walks away while other times they stay there and try to cut you.
You don’t stay or when she leaves, the same thing you don’t know where she points the weapon to threaten you and where she tries to cut you off when even after you give her the wallet stays there.
These exercises do not serve to condition an attack response, but to evaluate the best response to understand if it is better to take/control/disarm the knife to attack or run away or as in most real situations simply hand over the wallet because reacting would be the worst thing to do.
The Third Person During the Robbery
A third person present can decide whether to cut/attack you when you react.
Your “potential” answer must always be the best choice between those you can take in that context such as running away, taking/checking the knife or gun, but also recognize that there are times when you should do nothing but hand over your wallet.
The Robbery Attacker
Those who do the aggressor must do precisely the different psychological parts also as a non-verbal attitude, such as taking and running away with the theft, staying there to attack, being pressing, aggressive, etc.
The “freezing” phase linked to the high stress that everyone goes through must be transformed into an evaluation phase helping you with the creation of a time window but with the habit of thinking about possible actions and not to think about things that can’t help you get out of that situation.
Example of thoughts during the robbery:
think they’re robbing me, that’s what’s happening to me, I’m in the middle of a robbery, I knew I didn’t have to pick up at that ATM, my friend told me, after I report it, etc. it’s not thoughts and things that help you at the time, you’re using your mind for useless things at the time, are reflections that you have to do next to understand why he chose you as prey.
What you need to do is not wait to see what happens when you deliver your wallet, but try in that time frame to confirm the best response you need to have / while reading the intent of the attacker and then have the input/start that starts the action.
This happens instinctively not consciously.
Instinct
To make your answer happen consciously you should have been robbed dozens and dozens of times what is unlikely and as a result you can not have such a coolness to make your thinking lucid and conscious but it will be a more instinctive thought that is triggered by a “signal”.
So if your instincts:
- tells you to grab the weapon, do it and attack;
- If he tells you run, run as much as you can,
- or he tells you to do nothing, to give him the wallet do this.
Training
The training in this case is more related to building the time space to have the “moment” and to read the real intentions of the attacker even before you are able to understand the situation.
You have to read, rather than understand what’s going on, the real intentions of the aggressor in order to be able to respond in the best possible way, request delivery, escape, attack.
The response patterns are simple.
Ps. If you pass the freezing phase while you hear an attacker pointing a weapon at you and you are able to act immediately and take control of the situation without going through a verbal script or through the wallet to take the space or time window you can also do so, but if you need time to create the moment and gather more information run a verbal script or physical portfolio delivery.
Now the attack of a gunman means that you are going to do something complex and really requires a lot of awareness, it should be the last choice but unfortunately it can also become the first.
Read the signals!
This type of exercise is more related to that while instead on how to attack when a man points at you a cutting or firearm is a separate technical work that needs to be done before this exercise.
It is a complex work that requires a lot of study for high variables.
Remember that the strong stress makes your movements less precise and therefore the motor patterns should be seen not only in a “relax” condition.
Further analysis is related to how to deliver the loot of the robbery if you want to attack.
Also on this specific point there are methods that need to be tried and analyzed but the attack scheme should not be improvised but adapted to the context.
At that moment you won’t have much time to think about how to attack, even there will be your training to create instinct.
Stay Tuned!
Street Fight Mentality
Andrea
