This is a bit off topic, but indulge me. We had a little situation in our neighborhood last week, involving a home invasion. A couple masked (evidently armed) guys tied up a family and ransacked their house. The father was in the garage when the intruders made their entrance. The mother and a teenage child were also in the house. This happened in my sleepy suburban neighborhood, so it can happen anywhere.
The good news is that no one got hurt. They lost some money and some jewelry and I’d imagine they got a pretty good scare, given they were tied up in their bedroom after opening the safe. I don’t know the family, but it was the best outcome they could have gotten. As you can imagine, our neighborhood is in a tizzy. There are discussions of putting gates at the entrances, as well as significantly increasing the private security patrols that we contract. Yup, there is plenty of opportunity for security theater here.
But security theater isn’t interesting to me. I deal with that crap every time I fly. It got me thinking about what I’d do in a similar situation. I’m in the garage, the Boss and the kids are in the house. Multiple armed men enter the garage.
It’s quite a quandary. Some of you Hong Kong Phooey types might try to fend off the attackers. Do you run? Do you attack? Do you sacrifice everything to keep them out of the house? Do you try to talk some sense into them? Even if you have a gun in the house, how often are you in your garage? If you have an alarm, will you be able to hit the panic button? Should you, given that it could cause an unstable attacker to do something rash? Remember, you have family members in the house, which are unlikely to be as equipped as you to deal with the situation.
I think I know what I’d do. But I’m not sure what standard operating procedure would be, so I’m asking for some help. I know a bunch of you have law enforcement and/or military backgrounds, and many have advanced training in all sorts of self-defense tactics. In a similar situation, what do you do? The police are holding a meeting in our neighborhood next week, so we’ll find out what they suggest we do. But that’s just one opinion, right?
This seems like a targeted situation. The family has money and drives fancy cars, lives at the edge of the neighborhood, and their culture is known to keep cash and valuables in the house. None of which is my situation. But I’m wary of being too optimistic and naive about the risks to my family. So I’m going to do the threat models. I need to take precautions. I need to train my family what to do in a similar situation. What should I teach them?
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13 Replies to “Home Invasion: What would you do?”
An interesting point is made here: http://www.samharris.org/blog/item/the-truth-about-violence/
“What if your attacker has a knife to your child’s throat and tells you that everything is going to be okay as long as you cooperate by lying face down on the floor? Don’t do it. It would be better to flee the house—because as soon as you leave, he will know that the clock is ticking: Within moments, you will be at a neighbor’s home summoning help. If this intruder is going to murder your child before fleeing himself, he was going to murder your child anyway—either before or after he killed you. And he was going to take his time doing it. Granted, it is almost impossible to imagine leaving one’s child in such a circumstance—but if you can’t leave, you must grab a weapon and press your own attack. Complying in the hope that a sociopath will keep his promise to you is always the wrong move.”
Thanks for sharing this, Mike, and thanks to all for the responses. I’d love to see a newspaper piece on this particular incident, but even without one, there is plenty here to chew on.
First of all, it is great that no one was physically harmed. That is the ultimate goal. For this family, mission accomplished, job well done. Heroes all around.
Second, the psychology of the intruders is entirely unknowable. Don’t start to think that if you can just disrupt them before they feel they have established control over the situation that they will just leave, or that you will gain control. They may be highly professional/experienced, they may be high, they may just be desperate for any number of reasons. Don’t try too hard to get inside their heads.
Here is what I would have done before thinking this through more clearly:
Coming from the garage, I would first call 911, and staying on the phone with the dispatcher, turn on the voice recorder on my phone, then also try to get photos (again with my phone) of any vehicles in the area. Even if I know each vehicle there, this helps later identify who else may have seen the intruders arrive. Switching the camera to video, I’d pretend to be on the phone with someone other than 911 and (try my best to) leisurely enter the house.
I’m certain that 911 would protest my entering the house, but if my family is in there, I’m going in. If I felt that I had time, I’d call someone else and explain to them that I need them to hold their phone up to another phone connecting me to 911. This obviates the issue of the intruders possibly looking at my phone to see that I’m on with 911, potentially raising the stakes.
What I have now thought of that would likely turn out better:
I’d follow the above to the point where I pretend to be on the phone with someone other than 911. I’ve just added Glympse (http://www.glympse.com/) to my quick launcher, and would start that while while still on with 911 and would instruct the dispatcher how to track us in case the call is dropped (simply go to the website and punch in my code), then turn down the in-call volume and ringer and pocket the phone with the mic pointed upward. My pocket would muffle everything, but not too badly, and if we are forced to leave the house
It occurs to me that an intruder may ask for my phone and check to see my last call, which would be the ongoing 911 call. I suppose I could first call 911, give the details, then clear my history and call another party and have them patch me through to 911 again. Probably too much trouble for the moment.
I don’t own a gun, but I do, for a variety of reasons, subscribe to the logic that unless you intend to kill with one, leave it holstered. Anyone who flies heavy should have their own decisions made on this before any situation that may necessitate it can arise.
The points of complying with reasonable requests from intruders, sitting down with one’s family and discussing the possibility, remote as it may be, and having some practiced understanding of self-defense are the best pieces of advice here.
And yes, to @ds’s point about this being a low likelihood event, I get it. I pay close attention to Rich’s talks. 😉
Yet, we know how much the CEO listens when we tell them about low likelihood events. Well the Boss is the CEO of my house and she’s not interested in likelihood, she wants to feel safe. So there is likely some security theater to be had here, and some education as well.