Street robbery

So the first thing to understand is how are the dynamics, times, places, clothing, visibility, etc. of when certain types of crimes occur to build situations and also adequate responses to be able to obtain the most important thing the safety of the victim through an escape anticipates the crime, a correct attitude to limit the damage or in extreme ratio fight to save one’s life or create a temporal space to use a weapon or flee.

Robbery is a criminal action, consisting in the theft of someone else’s mobile thing, carried out with violence or threats, in order to take possession of it: armed robbery; crime for the purpose of robbery; accused of robbery.; convicted of robbery are phrases of common use.

The theft or violent extortion of another person’s thing is one of the criminal actions typical of all societies of every age and can take on different levels of violence depending on the societies and places where the crimes are carried out.

For a number of reasons we have the opportunity to view thousands of videos of different crimes where it is possible to make detailed and statistical analysis of events.

This does not give a real certainty because each aggression has a story in itself and the variables are many but surely this allows you to have important information without having to live the misfortune of a direct experience of a robbery or an aggression that often takes place with cutting weapons, hidden weapons, improvised weapons or firearms But not only as we will see later in the post.

With this premise, street robbery is defined as a crime with the following five characteristics:

• The offender targets a victim
• The victim is a pedestrian and a stranger
• The offender attempts or carries out a theft of money or property
• The offender uses force or the threat of force against the victim
• The crime occurs in a public or semi-public place, such as in a street, alley, garage, public park, on or near public transport, or in the corridor of a shared apartment

Robbery consists of taking or attempting to subtract something of value from the care, custody or control of one or more persons by force or threat of force or violence and/or by putting the victim in fear.”

Importantly, a street robbery does not necessarily have to involve a weapon, nor is it necessary for the offender to injure the victim.

Consider that however that any simulation you do you can never recreate the stress conditions of a real aggression but contextualizing the event in certain contexts can lead you to have a level of attention that can give you the advantage of not being surprised and already this can be very important.

The practice of self-defense techniques outside of real contexts makes absolutely no sense, physical and verbal techniques must be within a context.

As if they were designed to be used in that particular context and I’m not just talking about combat that still needs to be contextualized.

A work that does not consider this can never be categorized, nor defined as based on reality.

If you think about it, even combat sport is contextualized, you train in the ring or in space as in competitions, you use the timer to get used to managing time and energy, you train the techniques allowed and that are best suited to your strategy, using the equipment you have available, you make the most of the characteristics of the regulation and the sport you practice to take full advantage of it. Clearly for self-defense everything is more complicated because there are no rules of any kind but only to survive by fleeing or fighting psychologically or in extreme physically.

Practicing a knife or gun disarmament of a potential aggressor from a purely technical/theoretical point of view if someone points a gun at your head, then do this, or when someone threatens you with a knife, you use this technique etc., is a widely used approach in schools and courses of Krav Maga but it is not applicable in reality but it is a game that attracts many naïve practitioners who are fascinated by this cinematic vision of self-defense that is not far but very far from reality,

Those pre-packaged techniques only work for threats and attacks that take place within your school/training space, as this is the context in which you are practicing them.

If you want the training to be relevant, you need to create the correct and accurate context/scenario and effective threat analysis and trained decision-making along with the execution of the technique (or the decision not to apply a physical solution).

The illusion of reaction to a robbery

It is easy for an instructor to satisfy a student’s desire to always be able to physically control a potentially violent situation, but this is not always realistic and there are situations in which you have to stand still pandering to the robber(s) and escape if you have the chance.

It is wrong not to say irresponsible to modify reality so that every situation barks a physical and technical solution and that works in every scenario and context.

In this post you are reading how to analyze and research cases of street robberies/robberies, so that we can get a better idea of what such criminal actions actually look like, rather than simply trying to imagine how such crimes are committed and/or using anecdotal evidence from tales of friends and acquaintances that could be fictional episodes or cinematic tales of the story rather than actually being victims of a robbery.

Today, thanks to the collection of information, surveillance videos, etc., academic research is always “theory”, but it provides information that was previously based only on the story of victims and witnesses who are often not so reliable because it is a story distorted by strong stress.

My experiences of violence are limited to myself, and the contexts in which I have experienced violence and this cannot be enough when it comes to training.

For this reason, together with the team and friends in the security sector we have done research work in recent years that has allowed us to establish many common elements in the different robbery methodologies in order to have a realistic approach in training.

A researcher and a work team that interviews multiple victims of a particular crime, views footage and talks to those offenders who commit them, has access to many, many more experiences and many different contexts that are able to inform us about what the real world outside of our experiences seems.

You have to think like a robber if you want to understand!

Men rob men more

Statistics carried out in the UK and USA have found that 76% of victims of personal robberies and 94% of offenders were male, i.e. robberies are typically criminal actions between men.

There may be several reasons for this male predominance in this type of crime.

One of the reasons is that in many cases, when it comes to committing certain crimes, especially those involving violence, offenders are trying to establish and demonstrate “masculinity.”

While a crime such as street robbery may seem mainly motivated by the need to acquire goods, namely money, it is also an expressive crime in which the perpetrator comes to express an identity, which he created for himself, acquiring a sense of power and control over those who target and victimize.

This may require them to target men, rather than women.

Another reason may be due to “opportunity”.

Group robberies among young people

Some news stories have shown that in some cases the robberies were committed for recreational purposes, by groups (some formal others informal) of minors to remove us, as a means of entertainment.

Some specific analyses of this crime highlighted that this was especially true for groups of male adolescents and boys who targeted other peers they met as a means of establishing a reputation within the group, that is, there was an element of performance in these crimes.

The purpose is to pay for a burger, steal clothing, expensive phones but also to be the leaders of the group.

Some guys carry out assaults using pepper spray to make the victim softer while the group hits him and steals everything.

These groups, as they get older, often have a tendency to continue this criminal method with different purposes, they begin to commit street robberies as a means of generating money to buy alcohol and drugs, maintaining the same methods they used when they were younger, i.e. they already had a model on who to target (prey) and how they committed their crimes (robbery methods).

Other approaches in the premises are that of a cute girl who with a seductive excuse takes you out around the corner of the local and the guys carry out aggressions using pepper spray or hit you from behind and take you away phone, car keys, money, gold necklace, etc.

Even growing up it is worth noting that street robberies are not only about money, they are also used to establish identity, both for themselves and for the group because often robberies are made by two or more subjects.

Over 60% of all robberies are committed by two or more people, who are somehow related as relationship executing crimes together is a form of bond for those who did.

Although it may be tempting to suggest that there are big differences between street robberies in one country compared to another in reality it was not so, the common elements always remain.

When we start treating a street robbery as an expressive crime, rather than a purely instrumental one, there is much more at stake than just a wallet etc.

Attack Methods

The analysis of robberies has led to the creation of four types of basic robbery methods, based on:

• level of violence and
• on the interaction with the individual victim.

The ability to use certain methods of attack in particular contexts could also influence a person’s decision to commit a street robbery.

Street robbers use four main methods of attack: clashes, counters, blitzes and thefts.

Offenders use some tactics more frequently.

For example, clashes were more common in a UK study where Confrontation (used in 37% of robberies), followed by blitzes (25%), versus (22%) and thefts with snatching (14%).

These methods are not mutually exclusive and may change in the course of the robbery.

Each attack method is described below:

Confrontation . The offender requests property or property at the time of contact with the victim. The offender usually uses verbal commands to gain condescension (for example, “Give me your money”). Violence could follow if the victim does not obey.

Blitz (the lightning robbery). The offender first uses violence to gain control over the victim (i.e., establish “who is responsible”). The actual robbery occurs after the offender immobilizes the victim.

With (Cons) The offender uses a distraction to catch the victim off guard. For example, an offender might ask someone for the time or directions before attacking. The use of a legitimate distraction allows the robber to get in touch with the victim without being alarmed.

Snatch (theft with snatch). This tactic occurs very quickly. No verbal communication takes place between the offender and the victim before the robbery. The offender typically grabs visible property (e.g., bags and cell phones), then flees. Theft of snatches in some states (e.g. the United States) are often combined with pickpocketing in official statistics, making it difficult to determine their true prevalence and incidence. In fact, a theft with snatch can be officially counted only if the victim is injured, even if the robber uses force without causing injury. This issue has important implications for the analysis of the problem because the crimes identified as “street theft” are actually street robberies.

Drugs

There is also a type of robbery that is done under the influence of drugs to eliminate fear or in abstinence from drugs.

The use of drugs in the conduct of crimes is something known and in some cases can also lead to a disproportionate use of violence as well as the rush to procure it.

In any form of dialogue the offender simply begins to physically attack those he has targeted even if he is doing what he says and this has been found that 50% of the people involved in this type of assault were either drugged at the time of the robbery or looking for money to buy drugs.

It is still worth mentioning that in most robberies there are two or more aggressors, so most reaction cases will involve multiple aggressors.

High violence and high interaction, robberies used physical intimidation as a means to force those who were targeted to consent, these were the interactions in which a weapon could be used, although it is still worth remembering that about 40% of robberies are conducted without, for example, being classified as armed robberies.

If you consider that most street robberies involve two or more individuals, a show of force without the need for a weapon is usually sufficient.

The scam approach represented the smallest percentage of street robberies, because it is an approach that needs more involvement and takes longer to plan.

Robbers look for a quick and easy crime.

In 2022 it is important to understand that street robberies are expressions rather than simple instrumental/transactional crimes to obtain goods that has a deeper level of emotional content in robberies than one might think, that is, it is a type of crime that those who carry it out go beyond the acquisition of goods but are representative of control and demonstration of their social group to which they belong.

When you begin to consider it a crime that is largely committed by two or more people, it is crucial to put in your training more aggressors and see how the possible solutions now look, for example, disarming a weapon while being attacked by a second aggressor etc. , you already understand how much reality is not the fiction of cinema.

Each training session must always be focused and contextualized (this also applies to combat sport) to make sure that the training is relevant and contextual, never generalist because it is necessary considering the various scenarios as well as building the correct answers and avoiding panic and that fear takes over making the aggressor nervous who can have violent reactions more than necessary.

Stay Tuned!

Street Fight Mentality & Fight Sport