Violence is the issue
The issue is violence - whether motivated by ideology or criminal intent - violence is the common thread
“We are not the kind communities that we think we are - we have deep seated issues with people prepared to use extreme violence”
In a six month window - two violent knife attacks in two supermarkets inside New Zealand communities. The most recent, is motivated by ideology the first by pure criminal badness.
The issue facing all of us, is that we do have individuals and groups with deep hatred and they are prepared to use extreme violence on random victims. On us.
We need to acknowledge that we have hate and violence within our communities that festers away and occasionally it comes to the surface and unleashes itself on kiwis going about their everyday lives.
For them the offenders, the more random and the more victims there are, the better. That’s why these attacks occur in places like supermarkets. Where the next one occurs is of course unknown - but it will occur - a mall, a sporting event, a music gig, public transport maybe, who knows, but don’t be surprised when it does happen because it will.
Don’t be surprised
So what do we do as individuals as families as businesses to protect ourselves from this type of criminal violence. Well, firstly - acknowledge that it can happen but certainly don’t catstrophise that it will happen. Don’t want it to happen but don’t be surprised when it does.
Have that engaged and appropriate level of situational awareness along side some robust “what if conversations” at a individual and team levels will give you a little bit of rigor of what to do.
The NZ government will soon publicly voice the campaign around active criminals events in public places - Escape - Hide - Tell, is the NZ version of the international best practice guide of Run -Hide -Fight-Tell.
At its most simplest level of training - if your ever caught up in an active scenario - Getting away from the danger is your best option and if you can’t do that because of the environment then hide.
Business should have robust lockdown and shelter plans in place - and these should be practiced on a semi regular basis. For the same reasons we do fire drills we should occasionally do drills in response to scenarios that are now regular on the New Zealand public landscape.
And we need to practice that because we have issues with violence in this country and the risk is real. The likelihood that it is going to happen in front of you or around you is low but the consequences that we have recently seen is very high.
What can be said with some surety though is it will happen again - wether a school, a mall, a sporting event, a music gig or another supermarket, I don’t know but it will happen. When you mix the cocktail ingredients of hate and violence together this, sadly is the result.
Don’t want it to be true, don’t want it to happen, but don’t be surprised when it does.
QRisk Training
Paul Walsh is a partner at QRisk Training. With a vision of “a safer world, one client at a time”. QRisk are specialists in lifting the capability and capacity of people and organisations – keeping people safe through onsite and online interactive training and the wider good drills programmes. He is also a keynote speaker around people safety security with a focus on situational awareness training, personal accountability and responsibility.