Responding to Surveillance

One of the phases or stages that predatory individuals conduct when targeting an individual is that of surveillance. This may take place over days and weeks, in the case of a residential burglary, months or years if it’s a sexual assault of a “friend” or acquaintance, or seconds/minutes if it’s an opportunistic street robbery, etc. In its simplest form surveillance is about information gathering e.g. the burglar wants to know the times of day when the property is vacant, and the mugger needs to confirm that they have selected a suitable victim i.e. one who will be compliant and acquiesce to their demands, etc. I have written before about identifying if someone in a public space is watching you, and/or has taken an interest in you (identifying when someone is target-glancing, scanning etc.), however I haven’t written so much about some of the specific things you can do in such situations; which may deter somebody from continuing through to the attack/conflict phase.

Even after the victim selection phase, there are opportunities to “communicate” to a would-be attacker that you are too hard a target for them e.g. a burglar might select a particular property because they have observed delivery trucks turning up night and day delivering high-end luxury consumer goods, but then abort any plans to break-in, after they realize that the property is almost always occupied, and is protected by a couple of dogs [these don’t have to be Dobermans on steroids, who are fed a daily diet of human flesh, etc – pretty much any dog will act as a deterrent]. However rich the rewards are, there are some risks that aren’t worth taking. I remember hearing of a diplomat who had been targeted for a car bombing by a terrorist group, but appeared too vigilant in checking his car every time before he got in it; lifting the hood/bonnet and looking underneath it, etc. It appeared to the group that he was already aware of this potential danger/threat, and so they de-selected him, in favor of somebody who they thought would be an easier/softer target. It turned out that the diplomat’s car had an oil-leak and this is what he was checking for before each journey – not looking like an easy target is often as good a deterrence as not being one; to the observer there may appear little or no difference. Even if we believe we have been observed and selected, it is often not too late to deter a potential assailant by checking that our posture is upright, that we are walking in a fluid manner, and putting our head on a swivel to indicate that we are aware of what’s going on in our environment, etc. and if we were stationary, to start moving in a purposeful manner.

If I was working professionally with a client, I might not want the person conducting surveillance, to know that I/the team has identified their interest in the principal i.e. the person I/we is looking after. It may be that they’re not working alone, and that it is necessary to identify the other individuals who are working with them – if they become aware that they’ve been identified, they might change over personnel, and I/we’d have to start the process again; better to let them think that they remain unobserved, so that they can be kept track of. For most of us, in most situations, it is unlikely that we will have to deal with such a team of trained professionals, who are working together to keep us under surveillance. This means that in almost all instances there is little danger in letting a person know that we have registered and are aware of their interest in us. We are not in a game of spy-versus-spy, where we should be observing them in the reflection of shop windows, and monitoring the way they look at us, or are keeping track with our movement, etc. This is not the Bourne Supremacy. If we have picked up that somebody is watching us, we can let them know this, by making eye-contact – and moving away. It may be that this doesn’t deter them, but it does mean they’ll have to change and bring forward the attack/conflict phase; which would have been inevitable anyway – looking at somebody who was already going to assault you, isn’t going to make a situation worse.

How and where you move to is important. Part of good preparation and planning is understanding your routes to safety. It may be that you are in an unfamiliar environment, and that the person who has targeted you has a much better appreciation of the locale than you do. When you move away, you should avoid choke points that could slow down your movement/be a good place for an ambush, and funnels which could force you in certain directions; that might not be to your advantage. When moving in an unfamiliar location, try to remember how you got to certain places and points e.g. how did you get from the parking lot, or transit stop to your first destination – a shop or a restaurant, etc. – how you then got from there to the bookstore you stopped in at. By creating these links in the chain, you can follow a route that takes you back to familiar locations, rather than having to simply move away from danger into unfamiliar territory. In general, you should be looking to move to populated and busy locations, where there is good natural surveillance, etc. You should always move to safety, rather than simply run from danger.   

By and large, if a predator has lost the advantage of surprise, they will look for another victim; most are not so dedicated as to pursue somebody who is aware and potentially prepared to deal with them – this is what they are trying to ascertain during the surveillance phase. In most instances, they will have invested little time and effort in victim selection, unless they judge that it will yield a high and guaranteed return, and so move on to easier targets once they realize that you’ve identified them.