#fridayfundamentals

Tend to your own business

the Assassin

That’s a sage comment the Assassin made while he and I were talking years ago. His comment was about the perils of intervention. I had my own experience with it a couple of days ago and learned some important lessons about the entire concept.

While at a large retailer, I observed a low level criminal teaching his son how to be a vandal. The criminal was not merely watching but was actively guiding his son through the process of how to vandalize the inside of the store. The boy was about ten years old. It was clear that he was being groomed in a similar way to the youth who tried to rob one of my University professors many years ago was being taught the trade of robbery by his uncle.

The criminal and his son were right next to me and the brazenness of the criminality surprised me so I reflexively asked them to stop. The criminal immediately threatened me for saying something about their criminal act. At that point, I realized he was a seasoned criminal and my conscious mind took over so I withdrew.

Upon reporting the incident to the store’s management, they asked me if he was still in the store and if I could point him out. The criminal and his entire family were only two aisles away so I indicated who he was. The manager and a security person asked me to step away and then they went over to speak to the criminal.

A few minutes later, they came back to me and said there was nothing they could do even though he admitted committing the vandalism. Further, they said they were not even going to ask him to leave the store. I pointed out that he had threatened me, to which they said since it hadn’t been a physical battery they wouldn’t be able to do anything about it and the local POlice wouldn’t even respond to a call.

Rather than choosing to stick my head further in the lion’s mouth, I immediately left the store. As a precautionary measure, I took a Surveillance Detection route [Surveillance Detection post] home. Although a remote possibility, I didn’t want to a take a chance on the criminal deciding to follow me to escalate the situation.

Lessons from the incident

First lesson. It takes two or three seconds to make a conscious decision. As soon as things began to escalate, my conscious mind kicked in and I decided to withdraw. Before that, I had been acting reflexively as most decent people would; i.e., “Please don’t commit crimes in my presence.” I said it despite the fact that I have been preaching about the perils of intervention in criminal acts not involving ourselves for well over a decade.

Second Lesson. The incident was clear example that Boyd’s Process [link to OODA category] is not about making decisions in the moment. Boyd’s best work, the Aerial Attack Study [link] is about not only making decisions in advance but also formulating a plan for how to implement the decision. My plan now is to immediately turn on my heel and walk away from such a situation. This replaces my previous and more nebulous idea of “don’t get involved.”

Third Lesson. It is extremely unlikely that the benefactor of an intervention will appreciate it or even support the intervention. It’s just not worth it. As a fellow student commented to me years ago:

“What is the benefit? NO BENEFIT!”

Falah Al-Mutairi