The safety conundrum
The sign says it all: “Stand here to stay safe.” It was posted on the floor in the Savannah airport during COVID-19. The sign carried a ridiculous insinuation: Stand here and you will be safe.
Safe from what? COVID-19? Sexual assault? Random violence? Terrorism? Fire? Cardiac arrest?
How is that even possible?
It is possible because organizations are trying to oversimplify an area of daily life that is riddled with complexity.
This is bad guidance, and it is unfavorable. To compound the issue, those who espouse these edicts are rarely held accountable for the legitimacy of their suggestions. As someone who has dedicated his entire adult life to the precise area of personal safety, the frivolity is galling.
The human experience carries a degree of personal risk, and 100% safety is inconsistent with reality. Thus, it is prudent to take steps to be safer in situations and accept that complete safety is simply naive.
If you really want to be safer, prepare yourself physically, mentally and psychologically. Educate yourself by reading or learning from an actual expert. Check the resume and closely assess the background in an effort to confirm the efficacy of the claims before taking their guidance. Use curiosity, suspicion and intuition to help you choose the right guide. They need to embrace the guide role and not the hero role, as the story is about you — not them.
Assess whether the expert can help you in your situation, with your capabilities and capacities. Are they recommending something that will put you in prison or get you killed?
Are they touting some specific weapon or product that only they sell and are willing to discount to you today? Are they myopic in their approach to personal safety and constantly preach from the pulpit of only one tool for the job, such as a firearm? What happens when that tool is not available at 40,000 feet or in a public environment that forbids that tool?
What now, says the expert?
If learning about an active shooter situation, are they just regurgitating “run, hide, fight” through a canned PowerPoint presentation, or have they actually put some thought into what they are presenting? Do they notice you are incapable of running because of an injury or life circumstance? What are you to do in these situations? Perhaps you are responsible for infants, young children, patients or the elderly who cannot run or fight effectively. What does the expert say here?
If someone is telling you they plan to “lock down,” do the doors actually lock? What is the signal to “lock down?” Does everyone know it?
Don’t assume — assess!
During your assessment, your common sense will formulate a smart question, and you need to ask it. If some expert gets offended or angry, you have just exposed their lack of gravitas in this area. A security professional has an answer for these situations and can provide sound guidance for your unique situation. And if they do not know, they will have the humility to say, “Great question, let me look into that, and I will get back to you with an answer.”
At the end of the day, you are responsible for your own personal safety.
James Hamilton is a nationally recognized security expert with more than 34 years of protection experience. He is a former FBI Special Agent and created the close protection training for the FBI. He is the founder of the Hamilton Security Group and can be contacted at: www.hamiltonsecuritygroup.com.
