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I just sent this out to all our staff in all our stores.
This past Wednesday, in the Wayne store, we were hit by a team of two shoplifters around 8:30pm. Fortunately on Friday, when I became aware of it, I was able to identify the parties and have them arrested. The same happy couple hit a Bottle King here in Wayne a few weeks ago. With the help of our video we were able to match photos and a license plate with the Wayne police file.
At the time of the theft, I noticed that both the AM and MOD were up front ringing sales. The one cashier on that night was on break and that left only one stock person on the floor and one in gourmet.
Nobody noticed the two enter the store. Nobody noticed them in the spirits aisle or the female stuffing her shoulder bag with five bottles of spirits. Nobody noticed the ‘gangsta’ walking up and down the spirits aisle as a lookout. Nobody notice when the female came back in the store and took two 1.75’s of Hennessey.
This brings me to an important point I would like to stress. It is called Situational Awareness.
Many people go through their day in a total tuned out state; some may call it clueless. In addition, the recent phenomenon of IPhone addiction has not helped the situation.
Please take the time to read the following piece on Situational Awareness. Developing this mindset will not only help us at here to identify potential threats but it can also have an everlasting positive effect in your personal world.
From Stratfor.com
More Mindset than Skill
It is important to note that situational awareness -- being aware of one's surroundings and identifying potential threats and dangerous situations -- is more of a mindset than a hard skill. Because of this, situational awareness is not something that can be practiced only by highly trained government agents or specialized corporate security teams. Indeed, it can be exercised by anyone with the will and the discipline to do so. Situational awareness is not only important for recognizing terrorist threats, but it also serves to identify criminal behavior and other dangerous situations.
The primary element in establishing this mindset is first to recognize that threats exist. Ignorance or denial of a threat make a person's chances of quickly recognizing an emerging threat and avoiding it highly unlikely. Bad things do happen. Apathy, denial and complacency can be costly and even deadly.
A second important element of the proper mindset is understanding the need to take responsibility for one's own security. The resources of any government are finite and the authorities simply cannot be everywhere and cannot stop every potential terrorist attack or other criminal action. The same principle applies to private security at businesses or other institutions, like places of worship. Therefore, people need to look out for themselves and their neighbors.
Another important facet of this mindset is learning to trust your "gut" or intuition. Many times a person's subconscious can notice subtle signs of danger that the conscious mind has difficulty quantifying or articulating. The discipline part of practicing situational awareness refers to the conscious effort required to pay attention to gut feelings and to surrounding events even while you are busy and distracted. At such times, even obvious hostile activity can go unnoticed, so individuals need to learn to be observant even while doing other things.
It is critical to stress here that situational awareness does not mean being paranoid or obsessively concerned about security. In fact, people simply cannot operate in a state of focused awareness for extended periods, and high alert can be maintained only for very brief periods before exhaustion sets in.
Because of this, the basic level of situational awareness that should be practiced most of the time is relaxed awareness, a state of mind that can be maintained indefinitely without all the stress and fatigue associated with focused awareness or high alert. Relaxed awareness is not tiring, and it allows you to enjoy life while rewarding you with an effective level of personal security. When people are in an area where there is potential danger (which, in reality, is almost anywhere), they should go through most of the day in a state of relaxed awareness. Then if they spot something out of the ordinary that could be a threat, they can "dial up" to a state of focused awareness and take a careful look at that potential threat (and also look for others in the area). If the possible threat proves innocuous, or is simply a false alarm, they can dial back down into relaxed awareness and continue on their way. If, on the other hand, the potential threat becomes a probable threat, seeing it in advance allows a person to take actions to avoid it. In such a case they may never need to elevate to high alert, since they have avoided the problem at an early stage.
People can hone their situational awareness ability by practicing some simple drills. For example, you can consciously move your awareness level up to a focused state for short periods of time during the day. Some examples of this can include identifying all the exits when you enter a building, counting the number of people in a restaurant or subway car, or noting which cars take the same turns in traffic. One trick that many law enforcement officers are taught is to take a look at the people around them and attempt to figure out their stories, in other words, what they do for a living, their mood, what they are focused on and what it appears they are preparing to do that day, based merely on observation. Employing such simple focused-awareness drills will train a person's mind to be aware of these things almost subconsciously when the person is in a relaxed state of awareness.
This situational awareness process also demonstrates the importance of people being familiar with their environment and the dangers that are present there. Such awareness permits some threats to be avoided and others to be guarded against when you must venture into a dangerous area.
This past Wednesday, in the Wayne store, we were hit by a team of two shoplifters around 8:30pm. Fortunately on Friday, when I became aware of it, I was able to identify the parties and have them arrested. The same happy couple hit a Bottle King here in Wayne a few weeks ago. With the help of our video we were able to match photos and a license plate with the Wayne police file.
At the time of the theft, I noticed that both the AM and MOD were up front ringing sales. The one cashier on that night was on break and that left only one stock person on the floor and one in gourmet.
Nobody noticed the two enter the store. Nobody noticed them in the spirits aisle or the female stuffing her shoulder bag with five bottles of spirits. Nobody noticed the ‘gangsta’ walking up and down the spirits aisle as a lookout. Nobody notice when the female came back in the store and took two 1.75’s of Hennessey.
This brings me to an important point I would like to stress. It is called Situational Awareness.
Many people go through their day in a total tuned out state; some may call it clueless. In addition, the recent phenomenon of IPhone addiction has not helped the situation.
Please take the time to read the following piece on Situational Awareness. Developing this mindset will not only help us at here to identify potential threats but it can also have an everlasting positive effect in your personal world.
From Stratfor.com
More Mindset than Skill
It is important to note that situational awareness -- being aware of one's surroundings and identifying potential threats and dangerous situations -- is more of a mindset than a hard skill. Because of this, situational awareness is not something that can be practiced only by highly trained government agents or specialized corporate security teams. Indeed, it can be exercised by anyone with the will and the discipline to do so. Situational awareness is not only important for recognizing terrorist threats, but it also serves to identify criminal behavior and other dangerous situations.
The primary element in establishing this mindset is first to recognize that threats exist. Ignorance or denial of a threat make a person's chances of quickly recognizing an emerging threat and avoiding it highly unlikely. Bad things do happen. Apathy, denial and complacency can be costly and even deadly.
A second important element of the proper mindset is understanding the need to take responsibility for one's own security. The resources of any government are finite and the authorities simply cannot be everywhere and cannot stop every potential terrorist attack or other criminal action. The same principle applies to private security at businesses or other institutions, like places of worship. Therefore, people need to look out for themselves and their neighbors.
Another important facet of this mindset is learning to trust your "gut" or intuition. Many times a person's subconscious can notice subtle signs of danger that the conscious mind has difficulty quantifying or articulating. The discipline part of practicing situational awareness refers to the conscious effort required to pay attention to gut feelings and to surrounding events even while you are busy and distracted. At such times, even obvious hostile activity can go unnoticed, so individuals need to learn to be observant even while doing other things.
It is critical to stress here that situational awareness does not mean being paranoid or obsessively concerned about security. In fact, people simply cannot operate in a state of focused awareness for extended periods, and high alert can be maintained only for very brief periods before exhaustion sets in.
Because of this, the basic level of situational awareness that should be practiced most of the time is relaxed awareness, a state of mind that can be maintained indefinitely without all the stress and fatigue associated with focused awareness or high alert. Relaxed awareness is not tiring, and it allows you to enjoy life while rewarding you with an effective level of personal security. When people are in an area where there is potential danger (which, in reality, is almost anywhere), they should go through most of the day in a state of relaxed awareness. Then if they spot something out of the ordinary that could be a threat, they can "dial up" to a state of focused awareness and take a careful look at that potential threat (and also look for others in the area). If the possible threat proves innocuous, or is simply a false alarm, they can dial back down into relaxed awareness and continue on their way. If, on the other hand, the potential threat becomes a probable threat, seeing it in advance allows a person to take actions to avoid it. In such a case they may never need to elevate to high alert, since they have avoided the problem at an early stage.
People can hone their situational awareness ability by practicing some simple drills. For example, you can consciously move your awareness level up to a focused state for short periods of time during the day. Some examples of this can include identifying all the exits when you enter a building, counting the number of people in a restaurant or subway car, or noting which cars take the same turns in traffic. One trick that many law enforcement officers are taught is to take a look at the people around them and attempt to figure out their stories, in other words, what they do for a living, their mood, what they are focused on and what it appears they are preparing to do that day, based merely on observation. Employing such simple focused-awareness drills will train a person's mind to be aware of these things almost subconsciously when the person is in a relaxed state of awareness.
This situational awareness process also demonstrates the importance of people being familiar with their environment and the dangers that are present there. Such awareness permits some threats to be avoided and others to be guarded against when you must venture into a dangerous area.
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