How do you learn to become aware of your surroundings? DEA instructors teach a color code awareness system borrowed directly from Colonel Jeff Cooper's excellent book Principles of Personal Defense.1 This system breaks down levels of awareness and readiness into four colors: white, yellow, orange, and red. It is a simple and effective system for teaching awareness and is worth repeating here.
Condition Red
Condition red is either âfightâ or âflight.â Those are the only options that are appropriate once danger has materialized. However, there is a third âfâ: âfreeze.â That is the one thing you must not do, but it is the likely reaction of someone unaware and unprepared. If you have identified your threat in condition orange and have established your mental trigger, you will not freeze: You will act.
In order to illustrate these concepts, we are going to use an example frequently provided by our good friend and colleague, John Friedlander. John is a wellârespected security consultant for Kroll Inc., a division of Duff & Phelps, a consultancy firm, and is also an adjunct professor at John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York City. Imagine you are shopping at the supermarket late one night. The parking lot is relatively empty, and you are parked in a somewhat isolated part of the lot. Always in condition yellow, as you exit the store you observe your surroundings. As you wheel your cart toward your vehicle, you notice a lone male walking across the parking lot. At this time there is no reason for you to believe that this person poses any sort of threat to you. You simply are aware of his presence and you keep him on your radar. You reach your car and as you begin loading your groceries into the car, you observe that the individual has changed direction and is walking directly toward you. You now shift to condition orange and begin setting up your mental trigger. You do not âlower your sixâ; you are still aware of your surroundings, particularly to your rear, as there may be other threats in the area. The person walking toward you may have a partner, or as you evaluate a possible means of escape, you are aware of traffic that might pose a hazard to you if you were forced to flee. Your trigger is a simple one. You think, âIf he gets another fifty feet closer to me, I willâŚâ You may decide to turn around and move quickly back into the store. Or stop loading your groceries, get into your vehicle, lock the door, and drive away. If you are armed, you consider what action would lead you to draw your weapon and engage this person. Or you might simply decide to turn toward the person and make sure he sees that you are aware of his presence. You might not necessarily assume a defensive posture, but at least you are prepared to do so if necessary. If the individual crosses the line you set, you act immediately. You are now in condition red, fight or flight. It is the mental trigger that you established in condition orange that allows you to act quickly and decisively and not freeze when doing so would place you in jeopardy. Remember, there are only two alternatives: fight or flight. If you must fight, your counterattack must be swift and violent. If you flee, you must literally run for your life. In this situation, you will also likely experience the physical and psychological responses to fear that we discuss later in the chapter.
The bottom line for purposes of this discussion is for each of you right now as you read this book to make up your mind to pay attention to your surroundings and respect the little warning bell you have in your head. Everyone is observant under certain situations. Put an upperâmiddleâclass guy in an innerâcity neighborhood, and he will become quite cognizant of his surroundings. The trick is to do it all the time, not just in places that you find unsettling. Don't get lulled into condition white under any circumstances. Remember, you are often most vulnerable in familiar surroundings. Generally, as you get closer to home, you tend to become more relaxed. That is the time you may be most at risk. Bad guys and terrorists know this and may very well decide to hit you in your comfort zone. Complacency on your part makes their job easier. Remember, becoming familiar with your surroundings gives you a huge advantage over potential attackers. Becoming complacent shifts the advantage to them. Do not cede the advantage to the bad guys.
As our economy becomes more and more global, executives may find themselves living in places where they face the added danger of terrorism. You may be an attractive target to terrorists because of your national origin or because of the company you work for. In such highârisk locations, your biggest enemy is your daily routine. Terrorists always conduct surveillance on their intended targets, and predictable routines make it easier to plan a violent act against you. By becoming as familiar as possible with your surroundings and by changing your daily routine, you can prevent an attack while it's still in the preplanning stage. Ilan has had the occasion to interrogate terrorists subsequent to their capture. The ones who talkâand generally that is most of themâalways mention how scared and uncomfortable they were while they collected intelligence information on the target before the attack. They all felt that someone was always watching them, and many times it caused them to choose a different target. Use this fact to your advantage. Stay alert and pay closer attention to your surroundings. Soon you will be able to pick out the unusual, including the presence of a terrorist or criminal who is targeting you. In addition, your alert demeanor will not be lost on anyone evaluating you as a potential target. By becoming more conscious of your environment and alert to things out of the ordinary, likely you will cause a potential assailant to move on to an easier target.
When David attended the security overseas seminar put on by the U.S. Department of State, he heard an interesting story. A U.S. Army sergeant had been marked for kidnapping by terrorists while serving overseas. The security personnel at the U.S. embassy knew that he had been selected because a raid on a terrorist safe house turned up a list of individuals targeted by this group, and the sergeant's name was on that list. The sergeant's name, however, had been scratched off and the reason for his deselection had been documented. Next to the name there was a notation indicating that this particular individual was securityâconscious and had a habit of looking up and down the street every morning before he left the house. Embassy security agents talked to the sergeant because they wanted to learn what extraordinary steps he was taking that had actually dissuaded a dangerous group of terrorists from carrying out their plot. The sergeant was perplexed. He told the agents that he hadn't been doing anything unusual that he could recall. He did explain, however, that he had been having some problems with the kid who delivered his early morning newspaper, who apparently threw it and couldn't get it to land in the same place. He said, as a result, that each morning he had to go outside and search for it. An amusing story. But think about it. The simple action taken by this man to look around outside every morning, despite the fact that it had nothing to do with antiterrorism, was enough to deter potential attackers. They perceived him to be security conscious and alert and decided to move on to the next guy, who wasn't paying attention to security. Unfortunately, they did so with tragic results; the other guy wasn't so lucky. The basic lesson that must not be overlooked is that even the mere appearance of taking security preca...