Sanford Strong - Strong on Defense: Survival Rules to Protect you and your Family from Crime

STRONG ON DEFENSE

Survival Rules

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to Protect You

and Your Family

from Crime

Sanford Strong

POCKET BOOKS

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The techniques and suggestions presented in this book are the result of the Authors experience in working with law enforcement and crime victims. Criminals, particularly violent criminals, are unpredictable and may not react as expected in given situations, and suggested preventive and responsive measures may not be effective in all circumstances. Care should therefore be taken when following the authors suggestions. The Publisher does not warrant or endorse the techniques and methods presented in this book. The Author and the Publisher assume no responsibility for any injury or damage to persons or property which is incurred as a consequence, directly or indirectly, of the use and application of any of the contents of this book.

Article on pages 4042 reprinted by permission of The San Diego Union-Tribune.

POCKET BOOKS, a division of Simon & Schuster Inc.

1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10020

Copyright 1996 by Sanford Strong

All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever. For information address Pocket Books, 1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10020

ISBN: 0-671-52293-0

First Pocket Books hardcover printing May 1996

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

POCKET and colophon are registered trademarks of Simon & Schuster Inc.

Design: Levavi-Levavi

Printed in the U.S.A.

Contents

Foreword

We used to be able to prevent crime from happening, even avoid violent crime by staying away from the bad areas. Thats all changed.

Violence in our day is random, explosive, and a hundredfold more senseless than ever before. In fact, violent crime alone has gone up 300 percent since 1964. Worse, sociologists who specialize in crime trends are blunt with their predictions: In the next ten years, criminals will be younger yet, more ruthless than now. The crime we have experienced thus far will pale in comparison to the crime wave by 2005.

Theres a new breed of criminal you, I. and our families now face. Hes young, hes armed, hes most likely high, and he has a thumbs-up, thumbs-down attitude toward your life and mine.

These are the facts: If violence strikes, survival depends on what we alone do in the crucial first few seconds. The police wont be there to help. Theyll get there later to pick up the pieces. I know, I was a street cop. In the early 1960s, three police officers were available to respond to calls for help for every violent crime committed. Now in some of our large cities, there are ten violent crimes per available cop. To return to our former level of safety, we would have to hire at least thirty-two times as many cops as are currently in uniform throughout America. It wont happen, and its not the answer. Safety from crime for you and your family is your responsibility. Thats why you need to know what cops know about how to survive.

My background is law enforcement. My specialty was teaching cops how to defend themselveshow to surviveand SWAT officers how to use and protect themselves against guns. My approach is tough-minded, direct, and hardline. There are no softhearted rapists or merciful killers out there.

My aim with this book is to teach you how to survive violence based on the principles I taught to cops. No exceptions. Nothing less. You need it that way.

In police and SWAT training academies throughout the United States, the core of officer survival training is the survival mind set. For everyone, any age, anywhere, and under any condition, that means having bottom-line survival decisions made before violence strikes.

The simplest analogy here is a family fire drill; in a life-or-death situation, you must have an escape and survival plan to fall back on... a plan decided on in advance. In a raging house fire or exploding violence, a survival mind-set creates a point of reference, a starting block for that moment when the difference between life or death is decisions made immediately.

This is not a crime-prevention book. This is a crime-survival book. Big difference. Prevention is everything you and your family do to reduce the odds of being a crime statistic. Its important. Survival is what to do when the crime is going down and what is instantly done or not done likely decides who lives and who dies.

At crime scenes it was always clear that many victims had given some thought and effort toward crime prevention but nothing to crime survival. This is the void this book fills. It takes you and your family beyond crime prevention to how to make split-second survival decisions. Self-defense gadgets dont cut it. Not even guns work for most people because they cant use them safely and effectively. The advantage of a survival mind-set over everything else is that its always with you and ready for immediate use. Thats crucial and lifesaving because when violence explodes the security of your world, there are no second chances and no timeouts to think it over and decide what to do.

Survival mind-set training began thirty years ago in police academies when for the first time in U.S. history cops became for some in society their focal point for anger and first targets of violence. I was fortunate to be a part of the beginning stages of teaching fellow cops how to survive violence themselves. Today that survival mind-set training has repeatedly proven itself as the key to a cops surviving violent assaults. Despite the current skyrocketing of incidents of violence against cops, the number of cops killed or injured has declined since the midseventies by almost 43 percent. The opposite is true for citizens for whom serious injury and death are at an all-time high. In a nutshell, the difference between police and citizen survival rates is mind-set training.

This book will first help you face this fact: if you or a loved one is the target of criminal violence, they will do to you the same as was done to past victimsyoure not different, just next. Then, it will lead you and show you how to lead your family to bottom-line survival rules to fall back on when the shock of violence is overwhelming and the paralyzing fear grips you so that you have a chance to change the outcome.

Strong on Defense makes available to men, women, and their families the same survival training provided to law enforcement for this reason: you and your families face those violent bastards before cops do.

Part I. Random, Senseless, and Explosive

WHAT WERE UP AGAINST

The Department of Justice advised in 1993, Without a complete reversal in present crime trends, eight out of ten Americans will be the victim of violence at least once in their lives. In December 1994, the Justice Department updated their advice: Every American now has a realistic chance of being the victim of violence including murder because of the randomness of todays violence. FYI: twenty years ago in the early seventies that prediction of violence was one in thirty; ten years ago in the early eighties it was one in twelve.

FBI director Louis J. Freeh spoke to all Americans in November 1994 about todays violence: This nation can finally learn there are no longer any sanctuaries from deadly crimes.

In less than ten years, were likely to look back on the early nineties and see them as the good ol days... when we had peace. We can stop this madness, but first we and our families must learn the rules of survival.

Violence explodes at unlikely places in our times. Random violence wont hit me is a dangerous assumption. Being reasonably cautiousstaying out of unsafe or deserted areas, not staying out late at night, never going out alone at night, and having a good home security system, etc.isnt good enough anymore. These days, it is less and less clear which areas are safe and which arent. Violent crime no longer happens only to people who use poor judgment.