Defend yourself!

I am an ordinary citizen, and I am subject to the same types of violence to which they undergo all Brazilians every day. But even so I thought I should not make things easier for banditry. I think Bandit is opportunistic and does not like hard work by definition. So, I always tried not to let things easy for them.

But one day they gave lucky and I ended up being robbed. It was a horrible experience and I took all the measures which I thought important to avoid further problems.

I am a person who is detail oriented. I do not like unpleasant subjects such as urban violence, banditry and their causes, the influence of drugs and poor culture in generally on the increase all forms of violence, anyway, I always preferred to do my part and avoid risks without going into the merits of causes and possible solutions to the problem of violence in the world in general, but after being robbed, things like death penalty, car theft, drug use, gang formation, began to interest me, at least for a while.

Today I am not quite so intensely interested in this stuff, but do not neglect the events and ways of prevention.

So at the time of the assault, I searched on "violence prevention". It was disappointing that so little talk about it on the internet. People just choose to ignore that there is a real big problem lurking at all. If you want to draw your own conclusion about it, think of it in this way: have you been the victim of some kind of violence?

If not, you are very lucky. Pray to this luck continues in your side, but anyway, try to prevent. The odds of being a victim for the first time is greater as each day passes and is best not to rely solely on luck.

Now, it you have been the victim of theft, assault, rape, kidnapping, blackmail by phone, or any other form of contemporary violence and genuinely Brazilian, think again: if there was a wide and general education on the subject, you could have avoided event in which you became a victim? Think, for example, that instead of losing two hours in any one year seeing a reprise of soap opera or a football match on television, you had seen a documentary with tips for preventing violence displayed by experts in this matter, such as police investigators, jailers and repentant ex-felons?

This subject is large and painful, but rarely discussed. I thought in researching the subject and create a blog with compilation of safety tips covering basic principles and actual cases.

So, I created the blog Defend Yourself!.

But I am no expert on the subject, and the internet is lacking in this theme, and I'd be hurting more than helping by giving tips on a subject in which I am no expert. I chose to leave him. But I intend to post the five or six texts that I provided in the air, lest they fall into oblivion.

The theme is, unfortunately, current and urgent. Today, watching the news, I could not avoid noticing two news warning of the escalating violence in large cities. This rise was expected and even inevitable, nothing is done to alert the defenseless population.

Here is registered my concern with the subject and my initiative in order to alert the ordinary people about what they can do to make life difficult for criminals, since we can not eliminate them, nor there are enough prisons for them.

I will return later to discuss the issue of violence in this blog, but I anticipate the suggestion to everyone. If you're a security professional, do your part and help in educating the society. Teach basics of security, which is not limited to "not let thegarage  light on during periods of travel," or "ask your neighbor collect your mail when on vacation" and the like. We need to be realistic about the facts: thugs are dangerous, ruthless, unfeeling and incorrigible.

Defend yourself!