The year 2017 has seen innocent UK citizens fleeing in panic from a plethora of horrific terrorist attacks and vile weapons related violence on our streets, writes Steve Collins, pictured, of PS5, the personal safety and weapons awareness trainers.
March 22: Westminster attack – four killed, 49 injured.
May 22: Manchester Arena bombing – 22 killed, 250 injured.
June 3: London Bridge – eight killed, 48 injured.
September 15: Parsons Green Tube station London – none killed, 30 injured.
Add to this already shocking list the ever increasing numbers of shootings, stabbings, beatings and acid attacks we have had to endure and it all points to one saddening fact, and that is that the UK is becoming an increasingly unsafe place to live – and that doesn’t look like it is going to get better any time soon.
Your safety is 100 per cent your responsibility. Understanding and coming to terms with the monumental increases in violence that seem to threaten us all, sometimes seems like a task too gigantic even to contemplate. There are times when it seems almost impossible to escape the impact of violence on our daily lives. In one way or another it touches us all and in doing so turns us all into victims.
Many of us, myself included, who inhabit today’s modern towns and cities, go about our daily business with underlying concerns about our physical safety. Our worries tend not to focus on whether or not we are going to become the victim of some terrible mishap such as getting knocked down by a bus or hit by some object falling from a roof. No, on the contrary, most people nowadays sadly are anxious about street crime, weapons and terrorism.
Soft targets include:
Hospitals, schools, shopping centres, malls and food courts, cinemas and theatres, churches and places of worship, hotels, office buildings, amusement parks and fair grounds, petrol stations; nightclubs, pubs and bars; cafés and restaurants; monuments and museums; sports and entertainment stadiums; airport Check-in and Arrival (Luggage Areas); bus and railway stations; ferries and cruise ships; Underground railways; and buses, trams and trains.
If you work in or frequent any of the facilities or establishments listed above, then you are a soft target and as such you should be prepared to except that one day you may have to face your worse nightmare. Most sensible people would agree that an attack in many of the locations listed is feasible and possibly even foreseeable. But the vast majority of those same people will openly admit that they have done nothing about preparing for when it happens. No one is immune, not you, not me, and the cold hard fact is that any one of us, at any time on any day could find ourselves in the firing line.
It is imperative that we all accept that we are living in an age of terrorism. If this wasn’t the case the terrorist threat level in the United Kingdom would not be set at SEVERE to CRITICAL, meaning the Government believes it is highly likely that more devastating attacks are coming our way.
More often than not law-abiding citizens look to the police to guard and protect them against such dangers. Regrettably, as many law enforcement officers reading this know, the police can’t be everywhere all the time and even if they could, the reality is that they probably haven’t been given sufficient training to enable them to easily subdue a vicious attacker armed with a weapon whilst at the same time look after members of the public. Even so, people do need to see more police uniformed officers on our streets, who, if nothing else, at least appear to have the ability to offer some form of protection. There is a visibility gap and it’s growing.
The simple facts are and always have been, that wherever you find issues relating to politics, bigotry, religious extremism, drugs, sex, or alcohol you will find crime, wherever you find crime you find violence and wherever you find violence you will find weapons. It only takes a small number of violent criminals and terrorists to create a huge amount of violent crime, and therefore we have to accept the fact that we need to do more than we are doing to fight against it. And why? Because politics, bigotry, religious extremism, drugs, sex, and alcohol are never going to go away and, therefore, nor is violent crime.
It’s all too easy to say that it’s the government’s responsibility or that the police should be doing more. And 99.9pc of the time you will face these threats alone.
I believe we all have a responsibility to do whatever we can to look after ourselves, our loved ones and those in our care. I also believe the more knowledge and understanding we have about the threats we face the safer we are from them.
Being alert is not being paranoid, being vigilant and reporting all suspicious behaviour is not snooping, and making a plan to stay safe is not stupid. Knowing how to respond to a violent incident or terrorist attack can mean the difference between life and death for you, your family, your friends, your colleagues or even your clients. It distresses me that when I am delivering my ‘We Go Prepared’ training and lectures I have to stress to the audience that they need to cultivate a mind set of not ‘what am I going to do ‘IF’ it happens’ but rather, ‘what am I going to do ‘WHEN’ it happens’.
