My Cat Socks And How To Become Color Coordinated

I covered crime in the Chicago suburbs for more than seventeen years. In interviewing neighbors of homicide victims, I never once heard the comment, “Oh yeah, we expected one day someone would be shot on their front lawn right here on our street.”

Instead, just like reading from a script, the most common reaction was, “You never figure that kind of thing is going to happen here.”

You don’t have to expect it to be aware that violent crime can touch you anywhere you go.

Before I was a reporter, I worked as a security consultant. I often had to fight with the families of corporate CEO’s about simple things like varying their routes to and from work, installing alarm systems and not announcing their travel plans on the society pages of the newspaper. Their most common reaction?

“I don’t want to always be afraid something will happen to us.”

You don’t have to live in fear to raise your threat awareness level from Jeff Cooper’s White to Yellow. Basic precautions are a good beginning and will give your instincts a chance to get up and stretch.

I walk my cat, Socks Monster the Feline Action Hero, on a leash (okay, okay I’m a wild man, what can I say?). One thing I notice before we go out is that he spends about five minutes peering through the screen door before he ventures onto the patio. His ears are perked and his gaze takes in everything. He’s scoping out his environment.

Now I do it, too. Before I walk outside, I look through the window. Five or ten seconds worth, not five minutes, but I’m not hoping to spot dinner, either.

After twenty years in this house I know the neighbors, their cars, and the landscaping services they use. I know the postal carrier, the trash collectors for this route, the meter dudes and the Orkin man. I know which families have kids. I know what time their bus stops, school in winter and camp in summer. More importantly, I know who parks on the street at night and who is out walking their dogs or otherwise moving around. I am aware of my surroundings.

Anything or anyone I don’t recognize takes me from Yellow to Orange even before I step out the door.

When Socks goes outside, I notice his ears keep flipping back and forth and he stops and stares under bushes, up in the trees and into the distance. The other day I was cleaning the car and he was leashed to the wall of the house. He suddenly made a beeline for the back door. I let him in, went back to what I was doing, looked up and was staring at a fox standing six feet away at the front of the car. Mr. Fox was no more startled to see me than I was to see him. Socks went from Yellow to Orange and so did the fox and I.

Animals don’t blunt their senses the way humans often do.

Think about it this way. If you saw two friends walking down the street and wanted to jokingly throw a scare into one of them, which one would you choose? The one with her head down watching the ground, posture slouched, iPod earphones in both ears? Or the girl walking tall, head up, listening to the world around her, eyes roaming, who spotted you well before you saw her and gave you a great big smile because she knows the kind of prankster you are?

It’s hard to recognize Yellow, much less move there, if your eyes are closed, your ears are blocked and your thoughts are focused on the dinner party you’re throwing tomorrow night.

Tomorrow, some ways to anticipate threats and avoid becoming a victim.

Later in the week, my guest will be Susan M. Sciara, who spent eleven years as head of the Threat Assessment Team for, as she puts it, “an agency of the Federal Government that is commonly associated in the public’s mind with workplace violence.” She’ll discuss threat assessment and prevention and debunk some of the myths we hear and read about.