Situational Awareness in Action

Situational Awareness

It is not often I can call upon the skills described in the book I co-authored titled Staying Alive: How to Act Fast and Survive Deadly Encounters.  Life is like that.  One minute you're talking to your wife, then next you see something that causes you to call the police, leading to an arrest for drug dealing.

I took my daughter to a hair appointment, where we met my wife.  While my daughter was getting her hair cut, my wife and I chit-chatted about various things.  She happened to look out the window, and she said, "Look at that!"

I looked out the window to see what she was talking about.  Across the street from where we were is a pizza place, next door to a building that had a sign that read, "Barber and Salon".  Standing at the corner of the Salon was a man in a striking black and red track suit.

I had just registered this was to what my wife referred when I saw a car pull up with a woman at the wheel.  He leaned through the passenger side window and handed her something.  She handed him something then drove off.

I looked at my wife and asked, "Did that seem odd to you?"  She had a puzzled look on her face as she answered, "Yeah.  It did."

I dialed the dispatch number for the Speedway Police Department and relayed what I had seen.  I then hung up and went back to talking to my wife.  Even so, I continued to keep an eye across the street.  The man in the track suit had gone inside the salon.

In a few minutes, he came back outside and almost instantly an SPD cruiser pulled up.  An SPD officer got out and approached him.  He spoke to the man for a couple of minutes, then the man removed the hat he was wearing and gave it to the officer.  As this was going on, several men came out of the salon, all were dressed in predominately black.  I was getting concerned that this could turn ugly when a second SPD officer pulled up, then a third.

By that time the officer had something in an evidence bag, and I knew I hadn't been seeing things.  We left at that point.

See Something Say Something

I was called later by the arresting officer, who got my information for his report.  He told me that salon was a "hot spot", but they had never been able to make an arrest until today.  He thanked me for calling, and told me he appreciated the assist.

Like he told me, police officers can't be everywhere at once, so they often rely on citizen reports to tell them where law enforcement needs to be.  My wife told me that she wouldn't have called.  She didn't want to be wrong, and didn't want to cause a fuss.  This is common.

Police officers are paid to make such calls, and have been given training on making such calls.  They would love nothing better than to get a call like mine, go check it out, and have it be nothing.  Or, a situation like this one occurs, and a bad man selling poison on the streets is removed and put in jail.

Situational awareness is not only being aware of what is going on around you and being able to recognize when something is amiss, it's the starting point for a string of decisions that can mean the difference between catching a criminal or allowing the crime to continue, or in some instance, life or death.

If you see something say something.