AVOID THIS ONE BATMAN

[jlwilliams]

Looking at the fight, scoring the fighters.

The shooter was smooth. Arriving in a nice car and walking in casually was definitely disarming. If he had said something to the target to engage him that might have brought him in closer making the shot more effective. Also, I wonder what the weapon/ load was. It didn't kill the kid but the target fled giving the shooter unencumbered access to the register. That brings us to his big mistake. He didn't have a plan or the requisite knowledge to get the cash out of the cash register. He failed in his goal. No cash taken, therefore his good approach and calm shooting didn't accomplish anything.

The other fighter in the ring could have done better by having ANY tool of violence close at hand. I don't fault him for falling for the setup. It was natural. He got right back up on his feet after the shot. Good on him. If he had a folding knife to stick in the guy's eye that would be better, but he didn't. I'm betting that never happens again. Non permissive state or not, that kid will always be armed from now on. Anyway, he didn't shank a guy. What he did do was cede the booth and get out alive. To hell with the boss's cash register, time to GTFO. Good on him for getting out with nothing but a bad scar and an education.

[Gunstore Commando]

I have nothing to offer tactically -- but -- this is the kind of threat that spawned Stakeout Squads (NYPD's is the best known, but I guess there were others), right?

[GhostRidder]

Other than architectural fix of putting the clerk behind a bullet proof barrier I don't see how you could avoid this given the current setup.

Taking an example of one of the very few people it would be hard to just walk up to and shoot - any POTUS. They have layers and layers of security. Multiple dedicated and well trained guards. Even Regan got hit.

[BillyOblivion]

This is a tough one...filed under the "Anyone can be gotten" box. I have a few ideas... but lets hear from the tribe.

https://www.breitbart.com/crime/2021...re-clerk-face/

At the base of if your brain is always at least 1/2 second behind the "sense data" that it gets. Your brain takes in this data--sight, hearing, smell, etc., and then makes predictions about the very near future. It builds a model of how the world is operating (It does this for short, medium and long term stuff too, but in this case we're only worried about the very short).

When something happens that deviates from the model your brain recreates it. If that event is significant enough it will cause the brain to *literally* re-check it's priors from scratch and rebuild it's "now" model. This takes time. Time you don't have if you're reacting. Time that is useful if you're taking (or trying to take) the offensive.

Being "alert"--spending more effort on paying attention--helps you build a model more consistent with the world, and can help rebuild faster, but there's lots of other things to do besides just scanning for threats if your job isn't scanning for threats. If you're a LEO, solider, security etc. you get good at it, and almost by definition getting good at something is "doing it with an optimal energy expenditure".

This is very useful to understand. When you wish to get inside someone's mental perimeter you behave in the patterns they are used to. You give no signal that you are anything other than what they deal with 120 times a day. Then at appropriate part you depart from the script **HARD**, forcing your opposition to re-evaluate their priors and rebuild their model. This is as true for a single brain as it is for a larger organization.

One time we were doing "randori" in martial arts class. My instructor said "Steve, hit Billy". As Steve came in for a punch my hands came out of my pockets, and one of them was holding my cellphone...which promptly hit him in the chest. While he was staring at the phone on the ground rebuilding his model of the world to include one where people threw cellphones as a form of self defense I hit him in the face to remind him to move while reevaluating his priors.

This clerk probably deals with 500 customer transactions over the course of a week. Probably half of those are repeat customers. He's also got to have a model (assuming he's done this for a while) of a robber.

This guy fit neither.

There's a lot of things one can do, but those aren't the things that a *clerk* would do, and they're not something that the vast majority people could do day after day, week after week, month after month.

This guy set up a near-perfect ambush. He followed the pattern of a near-sighted customer perfectly and at just the right time re-wrote the model. He even managed *not* to kill the guy, which only makes it attempted homicide rather than murder one.

Was there things the clerk could have done? Dunno. Some people are so good at not giving off signals that there's no tells.

[georgeib]

I think the biggest lesson in this is to be the guy that has no tells. Have a plan of action and execute that plan, even if you have to put part of your mind elsewhere to avoid giving off signals. Access your inner sociopath.

[Shannon Hogan]

Hell of a situation! Great commentary from everyone! There are a couple of books I highly recommend, one by Malcolm Gladwell, "Blink: The Power of Thinking Without thinking". Along with the excellent book by Patrick Van Horne and Jason A. Riley, "Left of Bang: How the Marine Corps' Combat Hunter Program Can Save Your Life". Both books have a wealth of information on how to use your innate natural perceptive abilities to your advantage in dangerous situations. I think, along with training, will help shorten the OODA loop, a concept developed by Col. John Boyd, USAF fighter pilot.
Mushin comes to mind pun intended. "No mind". Not thinking. Pre-programed physical actions are activated not requiring the usual orienting and deciding stages. In training I have experienced moving from observe directly to acting bypassing the middle O and D. But not very consistent, yet. It is an incredible feeling when it happens.

The clerk is breaking all four 'S' rules. Working some safer job is the smart thing to do.

[Redneck Zen]

...

The clerk is breaking all four 'S' rules. Working some safer job is the smart thing to do.

And there it is.

[BillyOblivion]

And there it is.

Outside of government, or companies/corporations so big as to effectively be governments, every job exists because the company--and hence the general public--"needs" it to exist.

So yeah, if you don't want to be in that position get a safer job. But someone will always be in that job, because we want to be able to grab a tank of gas, a large bucket of sugar water and some hohos on our way across town at midnight.