By Calibre
Press | Oct
6, 2021
In Calibre Press’s best-selling book Street Survival II,
authors Jim Glennon, Dan Marcou and Charles Remsberg share two pieces of advice
that can help you avoid inciting an attack if that otherwise may have been
avoided. In instances where an individual is absolutely determined to attack
you, there may be little or nothing you can do to diffuse their violent intent.
However, what you can do
is develop the pre-attack detection skills Street
Survival II includes and the popular Calibre Press
course Spotting Pre-Assault Indicators
teaches.
When it comes to deterrence, here’s what Glennon, Marcou and
Remsberg have to say in SSII:
Don’t incite, provoke or inflame violent behavior.
While there is virtually never an excuse for someone to resist or attack a
police officer, as professionals we need to recognize that often our nonverbal
and verbal behavior may incite violent emotions from the person with whom we
are engaged. This can be simplified by saying it comes down to the way we treat
the other person.
Again, this does not justify an attack, but police officers should
be experts in dealing with the emotions of human beings. We’ll say that again.
We need to be experts at dealing with human beings and their accompanying
emotions.
A person who is angry at the outset, for whatever reason, must be
recognized as a potential threat to the responding officer. Minimize
antagonizing such a person; this should be obvious. However, police officers
seem to ignore the fact that some words and behaviors are of a calming nature
and others incite. “Why are you being such an asshole?” for example, would not
be an appropriate opening when attempting to engage positively.
In the book Arresting Communication:
Essential Interaction Skills for Law Enforcement, the
art of developing rapport is addressed at length. It explains why
rapport-building is a necessary ingredient in establishing a positive
understanding and collaborative interaction. At the very least, officers should
be aware of their approach and delivery.
Not making a bad situation worse by contributing to the negative
emotions is a must. To do this, officers need to focus on their professional
goal and not be diverted by personal emotions and values. Police officers
should be proficient at reading body language
and at developing the ability to consciously recognize the behavior, tone,
words, etc. that indicate a person is experiencing unstable emotions.
Once that ability is established, an officer needs to know how to
tailor his communication style to minimize someone’s emotional instability.
He/she needs to communicate this recognition of the other person’s worth and
value.
Deter violent behavior and intent. “I’m
going to kick your ass, you motherfucker!” Every veteran
police officer has encountered people using such language indicating violent
intent. Some have heard this kind of vile rhetoric hundreds of times.
Contrary to media hype, most officers are very successful at
calming the irrational and avoiding physical violence to control or defend
against a subject. Officers do this by using the appropriate words, tone of
voice, facial expressions and body language. Some officers are better than
others and many are great at deterrence. However, this skill is acquired
through both experience and education and each is dependent on the other.
Some officers seem to have an innate ability to size up others
accurately as well as interact suitably for the situation in context. While
experience is a great teacher, the skills can and need be acquired through
studying as well.
Understanding body language, the paralinguistic (voice tone,
inflection, rate of speech, amplitude, pitch, etc.), statement analysis, and
the general reading of people, however, is not an exact science. This makes it
difficult to teach in the formal, limited settings found in law enforcement
training.
Balance is the key, but there is no specific balance point. There
are no words you can definitively communicating effectively, everything is
contextual. Too weak and you may encourage it to calm someone. No body language
that always means a particular thing. When it comes to attack. Too
authoritarian and you may do the same.
While we can’t describe the quintessential facial expression that
conveys supreme confidence, we can definitively say that the ability to deter
begins with recognizing the would-be aggressor’s intent and communicating that
such behavior would be ill-advised.
Source:
https://calibrepress.com/2021/10/want-to-avoid-a-fight-dont-start-one/?utm_source=Calibre+Press+Newsletter&utm_campaign=70dad98f45-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2020_02_11_06_49_COPY_01&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_dcd0c1c239-70dad98f45-177388209