Everyday you go to different places, see different people, and do different things. When you go places you know, you know which people are going to be there, how they should act, and how they should be dressed. Let’s face it, at work it’s the same thing day in and day out. You know which people are going to be there, what they will be dressed like, and how they will act.
When you go anywhere else it’s the same. The place and people will have a style. You need to notice what that style is. The style is normal for that place. Once you know what is normal, it’s easy to pick out the problems.
The easiest, most absurd example is someone wearing a trench coat at the beach in the summer heat. Everyone else is wearing sandals, shorts, and T-shirts and this guy has a trench coat on. Once you notice normal, the bad guys stick out.
When I worked as an armored car guard in southern California, I used this profiling all the time. This skill probably saved my life coming out of a Home Depot one day. It was a normal day and we were in the bad part of town (which was half my route at the time). The area was mostly Hispanic and there were always lots of people trying to get day-labor jobs outside this Home Depot. There were also a lot of homeless people around and car thefts and burglaries were common. The local gangs stayed out of this shopping area. This day, I was coming out with all the store’s money and these two guys dressed as gang members where standing by the exit door.
This was a bad area and gang bangers where common in the surrounding neighborhoods but didn’t venture out to this store. So, these two stood out. To further make these guys look funny, one was white and one was Hispanic. That was almost unheard of in that area.
They both saw me at the same time I saw them, from about 25 yards out. Both looked at me, then looked at each other, split up and tried not to stare at me. It was painfully obvious that these two weren’t normal for this place. They stood out like sore thumbs because I knew what was normal.
I pulled my gun and pointed it at them. Both froze like deer in the headlights. I made a run for the truck and by the time they figured out what was going on, I was in the truck and gone. During the five years I worked in southern California, I pointed my gun at a dozen or so people. Every one of them freaked out, except these two. I never saw them again.
You can notice normal when you go places. You may not know the entire back ground like I did, but when you walk into a restaurant you can notice what the people are like, what they are wearing, who they are with, and what they are doing. For instance, one of my favorite restaurants here in Texas is Chuy’s. At the one near me, lunch is always white-collar workers having a business lunch, at dinner it’s always families. So, the three guys coming in together at dinner kind of look out of place. Those are the people you should notice and answer the question of why they are there.
Look at the world around you when you go places. What’s normal? What’s out of place? Work on it for a little while and it’s easy to see the people that might be there to commit a crime.
Stay Safe,
Ben