3 Things Strangers Ask When They’re Sizing You Up for a Robbery

🔗 Everything I check on a house, room by room, written down: https://roycallahanbooks.com/ 3 Things Strangers Ask When They’re Sizing You Up for a Robbery The man who robs you will almost always talk to you first. Eight words, maybe ten, and something so ordinary that you answer the way any decent person would. In the three seconds it takes you to be polite, he learns where your phone rides, whether anybody is walking with you, and how quickly you'll do a small thing a stranger asked you to do. I'm Roy Callahan. Twenty six years in police work, half of it in a patrol car and half in plainclothes on property crime and street robbery. I took the reports and I sat across the table from the men who generated them. Almost every victim used the same phrase in the first minute: it came out of nowhere. It hardly ever comes out of nowhere. There was a question first. In this video I walk you through the three questions strangers use to size you up before a robbery, counting down to the one that does the most damage. You'll learn why answering while standing still is worse than answering while walking, why pulling out your phone for a stranger hands over the merchandise, why saying you're new in town is the whole audition, and why the request that moves you to another spot is the one that ends most of these badly. None of the fixes cost money and none of them require you to be unfriendly. Answer while you keep moving. Keep your phone in your pocket. Never say you're just visiting. Help people from where you're standing and never let the help move you. If it's useful, send it to somebody who walks to their car alone at night, or to a parent whose kid is old enough to be out on their own. Timestamps 00:00 The question that comes before every robbery 01:20 Why they pick people who look easy to steer 03:05 Number three: you got the time? 09:40 Number two: you from around here? 16:10 Number one: can you give me a hand real quick? 23:00 Be hard to steer (paste as one comma-separated line, sits under YouTube's 500 character cap) 3 things strangers ask, robbery warning signs, how robbers pick victims, street robbery, how to avoid being robbed, retired cop safety tips, situational awareness, parking lot safety, distraction robbery, do you have the time scam, stranger asking for help, walking alone at night, personal safety tips, safety tips for women, crime prevention, staying safe in public, travel safety, mugging prevention #PersonalSafety #CrimePrevention #SituationalAwareness