US expert explores the criminal mind

To not become a victim of violent street crime, should you fight, flight or submit? It depends. So advised US security expert, Mr Kelly Mc Cann, delivering a Personal Security Awareness Seminar hosted by AmCham at the Hilton Trinidad yesterday. Seeking to reduce seminar participants’ chances of getting attacked, he established some truisms about the reality of street crime and advised them how to react in different scenarios. McCann is a former US Marine Corps Major, security and military analyst for CNN, and senior vice president of Kroll’s Protective Security and Training Group, USA. Taking participants into the workings of the criminal mind, McCann explained what acts such people were capable of doing and how potential victims should respond.

“Have you ever thought about stabbbing someone?” he asked rhetorically, adding “But they will stick a knife in you without even thinking about it. The fact that you may go to jail is devastating to you and your family but not to a criminal. “You will never get the same comfort with crime as the criminals have.” He asserted: “Criminals are not stupid although they do seek the path of least resistance.” Saying there was no such thing as a random crime, McCann revealed the factors criminals considered when selecting a victim. These included the physical characteristics of the person plus how expedient the circumstances were to commit the crime. McCann took participants through a variety of circumstances — both urban civilian and military warfare — to illustrate how people cope with violence or alternatively deny in their mind that it is happening to them. For example, he recalled that two British SAS soldiers monitoring an IRA funeral had panicked when attacked by a mob and had been killed using one soldier’s own pistol. In contrast, two US special forces soldiers in Somalia in the Black Hawk Down incident had known they were going to die but had overcome or “flatlined” their fears to function efficiently at shooting their enemy. McCann advised that if one saw a threatening situation developing, one should bolt away before a potential assailant produced a weapon. But a more judicious approach was advised if one was already under assault, he warned.