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You live in a neighborhood that is changing. What
once was a quiet, sleepy suburb thirty years ago has seen the addition of a
subway station, several hundred condominium apartments and a branch of a
university. Property values have doubled in the past five years bringing
in wealthy urban professionals who ride the subway to work. A less desirable element of panhandlers now
regularly hang out at the coffee shop at the shopping plaza. In addition,
the plaza has seen its first bank robbery in recent history and the police
recently shot a man at the shopping plaza auto supply store. It was the
first police killing in the community in its 300 year history.
Ethnic gangs have moved into the neighborhood, and the crime rate is rising. A
young woman’s body was brazenly dumped at the police station by murders yet
uncaught. You recently formed a neighborhood watch as crime has risen in local
subdivisions. Two months ago a young man tried to force your front door
and then pretended to be a tree-cutter looking for work.
The local shopping plaza has also grown. It covers
two blocks along the main street about a mile from your house. The plaza
has been remodeled and has a covered walkway with square masonry pillars that
runs most of the length of the storefronts. This makes the walkway narrow
at places and provides panhandlers with hiding places from which to make their
approaches.
You are leaving the grocery store with a basket full of
groceries. As you move the cart along the covered storefront walkway to
unload it near your car, you notice your are following a very dirty, powerfully
built man in his late forties who is fiddling with his fingers in a manner
frequently seen among schizophrenics who have problems with the side effects of
anti-psychotic medication. The man is talking to himself and seems
agitated. Clearly he is either
not taking his medication or he is under medicated.
A young male employee of the store who had been walking
toward the man veers and passes him on the outside of a column in order to
avoid contact with him. The employee
smiles a knowing smile as he approaches you.
You car is parked several rows ahead, and you will have to pass the
schizophrenic man to get to it if you stay under the covered walkway and don’t
walk in the driveway. Suddenly you notice that you cannot see the dirty
man. He may have disappeared behind one of the columns. You don’t know
where he is, but clearly, he is not walking down the walkway as he was before.
What do you do next?
You are equipped with Fox OC in your left jacket pocket, a semi-serrated
Benchmade Mini-Striker in your right pants pocket, and a cell phone in your
shirt pocket. A Smith and Wesson 442 loaded with 135gr. Gold Dot +Ps is in a
pocket holster in your jacket’s left inside breast pocket. Two speed
loaders are in your right jacket pocket.
Carefully consider the scenario and send your
solution.
The Shopping Scenario Response
By: “A
Friend of the NTI”
Well,
this to me seems pretty cut and dried.
Since the neighborhood is becoming more dynamic, I’m going to change
some of my personal habits a bit.
First, I’ll stop keeping my pistol in an inside pocket and put in the
right hand pocket. Second, I’ll start
carrying my OC in my hand instead of my pockets where it might do me some good. Even pushing a grocery cart you can have OC
in your hand.
Well, the employee kid
seems to know something about the schizophrenic man that I don’t and I would
just as soon not find out. As soon as I
notice that the schizophrenic man has disappeared I would simply turn the cart
around and go the other way. My OC is
already in my hand, so I’m ready to spray him if necessary. I would glance over my shoulder as I walked
away to make sure schizophrenic man doesn’t start following me. I would get out from under the walkway as
soon as safely possible so I can see more.
If I had to take a lap around the parking lot to get to my car to avoid
the schizophrenic man, so be it. Better
to take a lap around the parking lot to avoid a confrontation than stir up trouble
when it’s so easy to avoid it. I don’t
even think I’d report the man, just go home, unload the groceries and call it a
night.