I had a brief conversation the other night with someone who delivers pizza for a well known chain.
He was saying how as long as people don't provoke other people then they should be perfectly safe. His theory was that if you are robbed you will be always given an opportunity to hand over what ever it is that the robber wants, and the robber will leave satisfied enough with his ill gotten gains not to harm a hair on your head, almost as a reward for being the model victim.
My opinion is that he will be perfectly safe and the chances of his being robbed are quite low, unless of course he crosses paths with the wrong person at the wrong time.
What he failed to want to understand was that sometimes robbers simply attack their victims with brute force, and instead of handing them your wallet, they TAKE your wallet from you as you lay confused and injured on the pavement.
I recalled an incident that happened a few days ago in Town where a man was attacked and beaten to the ground and his wallet taken from him. He went home and only then did he realise that he had a stab wound to his chest-then he contacted the authorities for help.
Our pizza delivery driver just looked at me and said 'Yeah, that's what they say, but I bet he provoked them in some way first'.
I am no expert but I do understand from reading about such crimes and talking to people who have been robbed that in fact there are different kinds of robbery.
There are the 'Cold Robberies' - these are situations where someone is asked if they would give something up. For example an older boy asking a younger boy if he can have 10p for his bus fare home (blimey that probably shows my age) and the younger boy simply hands it over is a 'cold robbery'. As far as our pizza delivery friend is concerned a drunk man passing him as he leaves his car and asking for the pizza would be a cold robbery. I assume that these sorts of robberies go largely unreported and are executed by robbers who for one reason or another feel in total control of the situation. They might also be half hearted opportunist situations. The robber might start out with no real intention to commit actual violence but could be described as trying their luck or testing the waters.
The second type of robbery might be described as an 'escalating robbery' - the robber starts of low key and progresses to overt threats or actual violence after a brief conversation. This kind of robber might feel the need to 'interview' the victim, perhaps they need to fire themselves up into a position mentally or physically where they are able to initiate violence against their victim. If my pizza delivering friend was ever approached by this kind of robber he would think that the request for a light was odd given he had his hands full of pizza boxes, he would remember his primary strategy of compliance and would try and be apologetic that he didn't smoke, then when the robber got angry his strategy would hit a brick wall - how does one comply if the request is impossible from the outset? Instead of using mental energy in an escape strategy he would waste time trying to out think the mugger in the belief that he had not yet decided to be violent and there was still a chance that some clever talk on his part might still avert disaster. Only it fails because the mugger had already made the decision to be violent, and the only way our victim could avoid the violence (although not in every case) would be to hand his money over instead of a light after the very first question.
Think of it like the robber needs some sort of trigger before he can get violent, an excuse, someone to blame almost. Give me a cigarette, what brand is this? I don't like these, what do you mean that is the only ones you smoke? What's wrong with the brand I smoke? etc etc until it comes to blows. If he receives the wrong cues he might back down, if he receives the right cues he will turn up the violence / threats until he gets want it is he is after. Robbers who escalate the robbery in this way are probably using the technique as a survival technique. If the mistakenly select the wrong victim, someone who looks perfectly willing and able to resist them they can walk away doesn't being obviously a robber.
The third kind of robbery is a 'hot' robbery - think ambush or 'jumped out of the bushes' kind of situation. The robber decides that you have something that he is going to TAKE from you, so he picks his moment and attacks you. His attack leaves you in a position where he is safe to take whatever it is that he wanted. This kind of robbery is the kind that men might expect to experience, it is just as likely (if not more so) to happen from behind and without warning. How does our pizza delivery friend expect to avoid confrontation through non-provocation if the first he knows about the mugging is just after he is hit or stabbed? A robber will use this strategy to overwhelm any opposition that the victim might have. It doesn't matter how big, how tough or how capable the victim is, if he scares the robber too much the robber will simply jump/stab/shoot the victim from behind without any kind of warning.
The other aspect to a hot robbery is that for all we know the robber was simply looking for a violent encounter and the fact he also stole your wallet was a bonus to him. How does one talk oneself out of a situation if the opportunity to talk about it never arises?
What makes the pizza delivery lad think that the victim in every case must have provoked their attacker?
