there's a pretty significant reason that
we say to maintain a reactionary gap
with an angry person
[Music]
i'm john correa the founder and owner
here at active self protection and i
welcome you to today's
lesson it comes to us out of pittsburgh
pennsylvania in the u.s
after thorough testing i recently
changed my everyday oc spray
to palm personal defense spray it's
nasty stuff and i recommend it highly go
read the news story linked in the
description and what you'll see
is this guy with his hand up who's angry
has come into this store
yelling about a girl apparently who
works there that he already knows
before the camera started he has already
thrown
his keys and we have some audio it's
pretty important it's pretty brief but
let's listen in
here
so she needs to get the [ __ ] out here
before i get her put in jail for the
rest of her life
you are on camera
the news story linked in the description
said this guy is charged with harassment
disorderly conduct
criminal mischiefs interestingly not
assault that's where this one ends
boy this one makes me mad on all kinds
of levels i know some folks are going to
ask
about me using a cell phone footage out
of this one man
i really you know kind of wore on this
one this one's been released on
literally dozens and dozens and dozens
of media outlets so
i'm bringing it to you to learn the
lessons out of it have a hard time with
that normally because of intellectual
property issues but
it is what it is so let's learn some
lessons from today's video sometimes in
a customer service especially you're
going to have to deal with jerks like
this
and i can't tell you enough for all
self-protectors for all of my viewers i
just
would highly recommend a book like
verbal judo
a book like how to win friends and
influence people to know how to talk to
people
to use your words to talk them down to
try to use something like the leaps
method of communication and all that
requires some training
to be able to de-escalate escape and
evade problems like this
you can't always it's a two-way street
but you really want to now i want you to
notice as well this guy is now
throwing things and two things before
the cameras have rolled he apparently
already threw his keys
now he's throwing menus and this is a
huge pre-attack indicator
somebody who is willing to do you
physical violence will many times throw
things first
and the the number one indicator of
violence is
pre-existing violent action so you see
somebody willing to throw
keys willing to toss stuff like this
willing to express
their anger in physical means you can be
sure they are willing to go further and
use physical violence and so you want to
protect yourself
and not let them inside your reactionary
gap
and that's exactly what our big problem
is here next pre-attack indicator we're
going to see again guys yelling
he's finger pointing and i want you to
look at his body language here you
notice he has bent
over the counter so he wants to get
closer he has his chin
stuck out and he is using big gestures
so his hands away from himself
with all these things in mind an attack
is absolutely imminent so the biggest
thing that i would say
is to use the space you have the
employee's biggest thing he has
available here is the countertop
there's no reason he has to be right at
the edge of the counter take a big step
back so the guy can't get to you
because if you leave him inside of arm's
reach he's inside your reactionary gap
now i've slowed down what happens here
but what you're going to notice is that
as he gets going what we're going to see
is he is
really upset at this point and notice as
well that our employee
is talking which is a good thing
sometimes you can say hey sir let me ask
you a question or whatever and sometimes
that can very much help
but the barking dog is usually okay it's
when the dog gets quiet for a minute
that you got problems this was the
indication when he quit yelling and got
quiet for a second
that he was going to attack so again
that's where the imminence comes from
and the fact of the matter is is that he
is inside his reactionary gap now
because i've slowed it down here it's
going to look like it takes a while but
it takes exactly
0.25 seconds for that to go from his
hand out to slapping that guy across the
face
and and you can see that our employees
just started moving his hands
so this guy is inside his reactionary
gap which is why you want to maintain
space even one step back would have
prevented this from happening
kept him from getting slapped i don't
think otherwise he could have as bad you
know he could have been the most badass
kung fu
master in history but there's nothing
you're gonna do if the guy is inside
your reactionary gap so
use the counter use the space use your
verbal judo and all that stuff finally
okay this guy's facing a host of charges
and that's all well and good
but it doesn't unslap this guy's face so
instead i
yes i want you to have a high level of
empty handed skills yes i want you to
maybe have something like an oc
spray on you because with all the
threats this guy was making oc spraying
him at any point in this that he's
making threats
is perfectly reasonable for anybody to
do but more than that
understand what the pre-attack
indicators are keep your space
away from those people and that way you
can prevent the
the action and the violence to begin
with as you seek to cover your asp