Cyber Security
Robbery training Rigid Rigid adherence adherence to to aa compliance compliance approach approach not not only only be be unsafe, unsafe, but but leave leave you you liable. liable.
W By Fraser Duff and Peter Flannery
8 | Asia Pacific Security Magazine
hen people think of robbery, their initial thoughts may turn to banks, the traditional guardians of our hard earned dollars. This transparent position made banks a popular target for robbery. However over the years, banks well developed security protective measures have made them amongst the most difficult targets of all for robbery. That’s great for banks and those who work in or are customers of banks, as it has significantly reduced the frequency and likelihood of an attack. It has however, also meant that when robbery does occur in a banking environment, it most commonly involved weapons, with firearms statistically more prevalent in bank robbery than in any other robbery setting. It has also meant that many more robberies take place against organisations that are perceived as less protected/easier targets, and many more against individuals in public places. More than a hundred thousand incidents of robbery have occurred in Australia over the last two decades, and in that time a predominant response strategy has emerged… the strategy of ‘compliance’. There has been a common belief amongst safety and security experts that compliance is the best way to survive a critical incident such as robbery, and as such, training aimed to help people develop the knowledge and skills they needed to survive robbery focused on compliance related skills. The strategy was built upon the premise that whilst robbery is a confrontational crime of violence, it is first and foremost a crime of theft in which financial gain is the core objective, and violence therefore simply part of a method used to induce victims to not resist. The logic being; that submissive, non-threatening and compliant behaviour will, in all probability, afford you the greatest opportunity of survival. This belief is primarily based upon anecdotal evidence of
the connection between victim resistance and victim harm, combined with what therefore appears to be a good common sense approach. There are many examples of victims who have been non-compliant, predominantly driven by the goal of “social justice”, including; challenging, resisting, fighting, chasing and attempting to capture robbers in the commission of their crimes. Those victims have paid a high price, sometimes fatally for their error in judgment. So it seems the main premise behind compliance is the perception that victims have one of two options; to comply or not to comply. Since non-compliance is construed as offering resistance, which is naturally associated with increasing the risk, compliance is therefore assumed the safest option. It is timely however to re-evaluate and consider whether the ‘one size fits all’ approach for dealing with such unpredictable and significant threats is valid and reliable? It may be tempting to recommend this approach, teaching staff to just comply; with the corollary being...you won’t get hurt. But this may not be the case in all circumstances and could falsely lead staff to believe they are going to be safe. Our beliefs in this one size fits all approach for responding to robbery is supported when nothing goes wrong. But what happens when things do go wrong, and these volatile / unpredictable situations change? Consider all the different variables that can occur in a robbery, given no two scenarios are the same. For instance what happens if a customer gets involved / intervenes in a robbery, or you are caught out in an isolated, remote location on your own or the robber decides to carry out abduction? What about options such as escaping or staying within a secured area that offers increased levels of protection, or activating protective screens or barriers? And when might