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here's today's episode.
There is absolutely a trend of people checking doors in
driveways at 2, 3, 4 in the morning,
and the police have no response,
absolutely no response to this,
because these gangs are 100% coordinated and
they make it a competition to see who can get the most stuff.
Kevin Estella is here to offer practical advice on how to survive in a violent
world, whether it's a criminal assault, car accident,
or natural disaster. Hello, I'm an investigative reporter Robert Riggs,
back with another story from Inside the Crime scene tape.
This episode of the True Crime Reporter Podcast responds to those of you who
have been asking me what they should do in the midst of a growing wave of
violence in urban America and overseas.
A US businesswoman recently told me that she is afraid to work alone in a big
city. In response, I reached out to Kevin Astella,
the director of Training for Field Craft Survival.
Its founder Mike Glover, served as a sergeant major in the Army Green Berets.
He deployed 14 times to combat zones with special forces and the C
I A,
but don't expect his director of training to teach that every threatening
scenario requires a gun.
Kevin Ella taught advanced placement high school history for 14 years.
He's about using your head and being prepared.
His survival skills were influenced by his Filipino father who hid from the
Japanese army in jungles and caves during World War ii.
Kevin, you're the director of training at Field Craft Survival. Been,
you teach a range of survival skills, but you know,
the most immediate threat that I hear about from my audience is,
is violent crime. Will you take me through, you know,
survival methods, how to survive a violent incident,
how not to become a victim in what you're teaching,
and then I wanna get into some of the other skills you teach.
Well, to understand violence, you have to study it.
There's a lot of people who want to turn their head whenever they see something
violent, and many times people can't distinguish that,
you know, violence is not necessarily a, a bad thing. You know,
you can have a very violent resolution to an ailment that you're having
where you're using the most powerful drugs to combat it and
conflict and violence, those two categories are two categories, again,
that people don't like looking at because they want to say,
it can't happen to me.
There's a lot of doubt that that could in fact happen to
them. So in order to to understand violence,
you have to find it in different ways,
and you have to look at what is both possible and probable in your lifetime.
You know,
there are a lot of people in the training space right now who are training with
outside the waistband holsters, and they're training with plate carriers,
and yet,
if there were a violent encounter in their civilian life mm-hmm. ,
there's most likely the chance that they're not gonna have time to throw on that
plate carrier. And there's not gonna be a time to, you know,
change out their inside the waistband holster and the gun that they everyday
carry for the gun. That's a lot of fun to carry at the range.
So I'm not downplaying that,
but I'm just saying you need to mix in reality based training if you want to,
uh, have a fighting chance in reality.
So I think what people tend to do, like I said, is they,
they paint a narrative in their head of what they think they can do and,
and how they'll do it,
but they don't wanna look at the reality of the most likely types of violent
encounters,
and whether that's a gas station holdup or it is an a t
m robbery, or, you know, it's a home invasion, whatever it is,
people don't wanna train for that.
They want to train for what they can do really well because
we have an aversion to training what we don't do well. And it's easier to say,
oh, I'll train it next time than to experience training and not do it. Well,
when, you know, when you allot the time to, it.
Is the first line of defense in a, uh, in, in our violent crime situation,
and I've got listeners that are American businesswomen that are saying they
don't feel safe in American cities alone anymore,
is the first line of defense a some type of weapon that they're well-trained on?
If we're looking at women who biologically are smaller than men,
therefore,
the greatest way that you can improve a person's capability is by providing them
tools that will not discriminate who the user is.
It's very common in tribal cultures around the world,
historically, and in the present day,
for women to be on equal footing with men when they use the tools that men use.
There's, again, no discrimination there.
If we're looking at resolving a conflict,
one of the greatest defenses is distance. You know,
putting distance between you and the threat where the threat no longer has the
capability of doing anything to you.
So I would say putting distance between you and the threat would be top of my
list,
because even when you have two very capable individuals competing
against one another, fighting against one another,
they're probably both going to sustain injuries.
And I would rather have someone avoid injury at all costs than to take it on
voluntarily. So I would say distance is a great friend,
learning deescalation skills, another excellent, excellent skillset.
But in my opinion, there is no doubt about it.
If you want someone of smaller stature to have a fighting
chance against someone who might be larger, and again, they might be smaller,
you need to put tools in their hands, whether it's an impact weapon, a blade,
a pistol, something that will absolutely level the playing field.
And I brought up women because in my experience in reporting with the violent
criminals in and outta maximum security units, often, uh,
their motivation is sex. That's just it.
So thus, women are targeted. That's,
this is not to say women are weaker or anything like that.
It's these are predators.
That's correct. And women, because they're, they're targeted for sex,
they can't leave at home what the men are targeting them for,
they carry that with them everywhere, and as a result,
they have to be hypervigilant and hyper aware of that. And there,
there's no doubt about it. You want to make yourself appear like a hard target.
Well, throughout my career in reporting this,
I've heard from homicide detectives, us marshals,
fugitive hunters.
Bad things happen to people between the hours of midnight and seven in the
morning. So don't put yourself there.
Don't be in the dark parking garage and other stuff.
And then I'll sometimes get pushback of people saying, well,
I shouldn't have to live that way. But again, it's, to me,
it's just a fact of life these days.
That's correct. And one of the expressions that we use in s o uh,
Filipino Martial arts that I, I'm an instructor in, we say,
there are no victims. There are only volunteers. And people will say,
that's not true. What about little kids? Well,
your parent could volunteer you to be a victim if the parent is
turning a blind eye to a known threat.
And as far as not putting yourself in those locations,
that's absolutely spot on advice. I mean,
even look at a bar that has a happy hour,
it's very easy to go from happy hour where everyone is in business suits or,
you know,
casual Friday attire from the workplace to when the college kid shows up
or, you know, the stereotypical biker gang or whatever it is,
a bar or a restaurant that has a bar attached to it.
The atmosphere can change very quickly in a matter of minutes.
And that can happen, not necessarily at midnight,
but after that happy hour is over, people leave and other people come in.
So you always have to keep your head on a swivel.
You have to be aware of your surroundings, and you just have to be ready to,
to change your plans. Uh, you have to remember,
the world is not going to conform to you. You must conform to it. And again,
that's another reality. You can't say that everything should go your way.
You have to do your best to make sure that you can get through the world that,
you know, presents a lot of, lot, a lot of hazards along the way.
Well, I know a veteran homicide detective,
and he has a saying that you better have a plan because they do.
Spot on. Yeah.
And when you don't want to train your opponent or the adversary is training.
So it goes along with that.
Well talk about the basics of training and basics of what you teach and what
people should start to embrace if they wanna protect themselves.
So the first thing that I would recommend as far as training is getting
physically fit. Statistically,
you'll need medical training before you need self-defense training. Uh,
you'll probably encounter someone that someone might be you,
you'll encounter someone who needs medical assistance before you need to pull
out any self-defense weapon or strike someone with your fist or your feet or
choke them with your arms or legs. So first thing is get physically fit.
Second thing would be learn medical training.
Because before you learn to poke holes in people or break bones or whatever,
you should learn how to heal them. Another thing is learn safety. You know,
when you get your firearm safety training,
that's the first step where you're learning to learn that all guns are always
loaded. Right? Keep your finger off the trigger.
Keep the muzzle in a safe direction.
Don't let the muzzle cross anything you're not willing to destroy.
And always know your target and what's behind it. Right?
Always learn the four rules of a firearm safety.
But once you get that firearm safety class, you can't settle there.
You have to realize that there is a difference between safety training,
and then there is a difference in performance training at your safety class.
They're not gonna teach you how to do an administrative reload or a speed
reload. Right? You're going to have to learn those elsewhere.
And you can't assume that the only type of training you're going to need is
gonna be firearms, because there's that old expression.
If all you have is a hammer, all you see is nails.
And there are people who carry pistols who think that they can,
you know, travel through the world, and they'll,
they have this lucky talisman that will keep them from, from any doom.
But the reality is, verbal deescalation skills are important.
And long before you pull your pistol, if a person's not trying to,
if a person's not trying to end your life or do grave physical harm,
well maybe there's some other means that you can apply. Like,
what if someone throws a punch at you? Are they trying to kill you?
Does that mean that you can pull your pistol? Absolutely not.
Maybe you should learn to run. Maybe you should learn how to block.
Maybe you should learn how to counterstrike. So with your self-defense training,
it's not just projectiles, which is the furthest range that you have.
There's long range, which can be introduced with weapons.
So learn how to swing a stick, learn how to,
if you were able to grab a crowbar from your vehicle against a person who pulls
the baseball bat out of their car and you have nothing else, guess what?
It's better to swing a crowbar at someone than it is to swing your fists if they
have a baseball bat. And then once you learn that,
then learn how to punch and learn how to kick and learn how to grapple.
Understand there are five ranges in any fight from grappling, close,
medium, long, and projectile. Um,
but there are instructors out there that will say, you only need juujitsu.
And that is not true because juujitsu is ineffective against multiple opponents.
Juujitsu is not great for mobility. And then there'll be people that will say,
all you need is the firearm. But that, again,
is not true because you might need to stop someone or move someone,
and you're not gonna point a gun because then that is threatening or
brandishing. So this whole training idea that you're getting into,
if anyone's listening, who wants to know what you need to do,
you need to do a little bit of it all. You can't say, I'm just going to do that.
Because that's like saying the only tool that you'll ever need in your toolbox
is that hammer or is that crescent wrench?
But maybe you need Allen wrenches, maybe you need Phillips said screwdrivers.
Maybe you need a tape measure and a level. Well, those are all tools,
and you can't assume that any one of them is going to be the, the only answer.
So.
You personally, you have to make a commitment to education.
It's all about willingness.
It's all about how willing are you to defend yourself.
There are people out there that will say that they don't have the time,
but yet you look at their time that they spend on social media,
and you'll see that they're spending three or four hours a day on social media.
It's like you can use a half hour of dry fire or
a half hour of shadow boxing,
or you can go and you can walk a mile in 20 minutes and you
can walk that mile with a weighted backpack on.
So when people say they don't have time,
they're lying to themselves and they're trying to make excuses,
but the reality is there that they have the time,
they're not allocating it correctly.
Well, in this state, Texas, with our wide open highways,
long distances and big vehicles, you know, it,
there's the greatest chance that you're gonna be violently injured in an
accident, car accident. Mm-hmm. .
And I noticed y'all really do stress having a tourniquet in your medical
kit and your car and other places. Talk about that.
So we at Field Craft,
we advocate carrying a tourniquet in your vehicle because again,
that's a very likely place where you'll need it. And if you look at, uh,
vehicular accidents, uh, where people have died,
many of them have died from bleeding out because in an accident,
that car becomes a twisted heap of broken glass,
sharp metal, jagged plastic.
There are any number of ways that you can, you know, lose limbs with a vehicle.
So we say that you should carry a tourniquet in your vehicle in a way that it
will survive a crash. So I always carry my tourniquets,
I have 'em in the center console, but I also have them on the,
the off-road handles. The handles that, you know, you grab when your vehicle is,
is articulating over rocks and whatnot, and they're,
they're strapped in there pretty quickly and pretty tightly, you know,
so that way if I were to get into an accident,
I could self-administer one on my leg, on my arm, wherever I need to.
The other thing is, you might drive and,
and stumble upon an accident where someone has been injected from a vehicle or
someone is still in the vehicle and they need medical care. You know,
it's a common, common occurrence where people will,
you know,
show up on the scene of a crime or show up on the scene of an accident,
and they run to the scene of the accident and they don't have medical gear with
them, which means they have to run back to their vehicle, get the medical gear,
run back to the vehicle that's in the accident, and they've just wasted time.
And that critical time from when the accident happens to when help arrives.
So if you can stage that equipment in your vehicle,
so when you do stumble upon that accident, you can grab it,
run up to the vehicle, and now you have your gear ready to go,
as opposed to running back and running back again.
That could be the difference in life or death for someone that you might be
helping out.
Kevin, gimme a little background of Field Craft,
how it came about and what attracted you there.
So Field Craft started in 2016. The owner of the company is Mike Lover.
Mike is a former Green Beret and ground branch operator for the C I A.
And Mike was in a shipping container in the Middle East,
and he realized that civilians should receive the same training that the
military receives in terms of being prepared for a worst case
scenario. And that worst case scenario could be a car accident,
or it could be encountering someone with a firearm,
or it could be being lost in the woods. So over the years,
field Craft has evolved to offer medical training, survival training,
firearms training, and different types of resilience training, uh,
as well as mobility, uh, with vehicles. Now, I joined the
one, Mike had read my book the year before,
and his girlfriend at the time said, Hey, take a look at this book.
He told her, this is the guy who I want to run the survival side of my company.
And Mike paid attention to my social media. He had me on the podcast.
He realized that not only am I a primitive skills guy all the way through the
modern, with heavy emphasis on bushcraft training,
which is all traditional living skills, living with the land as opposed to,
you know, man versus wild. And not only do I have that,
but I'm also into martial arts. And I've gone to multiple shooting schools.
So he had me out there in Prescott, Arizona,
which is where the company was based for quite some time.
I did a trial class out there teaching a course.
I really fell in love with the company, what it stood for, how it was being run.
And that's when I made the decision. I was like, okay,
I will leave my regular daily job,
which was teaching high school history. I did that for 14 years,
and I moved out to Utah from Connecticut to join the company full time.
And I've been working at Field Craft ever since. But last year,
just around this time, I moved from Utah to North Carolina,
and I've been heading up the North Carolina office, uh,
since November of last year.
Well,
I wanna tell our listeners that book you mentioned is 101 Skills You Need To
Survive In the Woods. Y'all talk about survival. Other people calls it,
calls it preppers. Somehow that's gotten a, you know,
a bad connotation yet, you know, I, in high school,
I was sea scout part of Boy Scouts, you know, what's the motto? Be prepared.
Then I was an adult leader in a Boy Scout troupe where my son got his eagle.
Be prepared.
What happened that suddenly preparedness has become kind of a dirty word in some
parts of the media?
Well, I mean, if you wanna really take it back about 30 years,
you can take a look at Oklahoma City, right? Timothy McVay, Terry Nichols.
That was really when the survival community was shaken up because Timothy
McVay and Terry Nichols were both considered preppers.
They both were considered doomsday, uh, preppers.
And if you wanna take it one step further back, and you look at Ruby Rich,
that group was considered a group of preppers. And then you look at Waco,
and they were considered preppers.
And it seemed like for many years there was a shift from
learning just wilderness survival skills and, you know,
being into firearms,
to having this perception that if you were preparing for
disaster, you were anti-government.
So that anti-government slant existed for many,
many, many years in the survival community. And keep in mind,
I've been following the survival community closely since approximately September
of 1994 when I received my first issue of American Survival Guide.
So I've been in the survival community for quite some time and,
and reading the articles and talking on discussion boards and going to meetups
and whatnot, like I've been fairly, fairly, uh, intertwined with it. Well,
September 11th happened,
and it was a positive spin for prepping because we realized
you should have prep for disaster,
especially terrorism on a scale of nine 11. And then after that,
there was the whole community of, uh,
people that went on cable television,
and then there were the TV shows that were like Doomsday preppers,
where people were showing off their, the gear that they had.
And everyone was like, oh, they're crazy. They're paranoid. Oh,
they're planning for the Yellowstone Supervolcano. Or, you know,
they're planning on a biological attack or whatever.
And people thought that was crazy. It could never happen to them, right?
I don't know how many times I've heard that over the years,
you're crazy for carrying a pistol. What do you think is gonna happen?
You're gonna, are you some hero, da da da? Like, I,
I've heard that I don't know how many times,
and I just laugh because there's a double standard with preparation
in my home state of Connecticut in 2007, Dr. William Petit,
a good friend of my father, was the victim of a home invasion where his wife,
Jennifer Petit, and their two daughters were raped and murdered,
and the house was burnt down. And people said, oh my gosh,
how could that ever happen? And if Dr. Petit said, I want to carry a pistol,
they would say, well, guess what? He's a victim. He,
I understand why he carries one. Well, there's a double standard.
You have to be almost be victimized or put into a position where something
bad has happened to you for people to understand why you would do something.
And if you have never experienced that, you're suddenly paranoid.
There's absolutely a double standard. Well, ,
I think all of that, you know,
we had that watershed moment in 95 with Oklahoma City. Well,
we also had that watershed moment in 2020 with Covid.
And we saw very quickly how fragile the supply chain was.
People couldn't get hand sanitizer, they couldn't get toilet paper,
they couldn't get the face masks,
and suddenly it was okay to be a prepper.
So that negative connotation really reached a high point in the nineties.
But we've had moments since then that have kind of made
prepping acceptable. It's not as crazy as it used to be.
There will still be people who will say that if you're a prepper, you're crazy.
I don't care what those people have to say. I care about the people,
I care about, my friends, my family, my loved ones.
I know when something does happen, I will be ready.
The people who called me crazy will probably be looking for help.
And at that point, I'll say, it was on you and you failed.
I'm glad you gave us that history. I was at Waco for all 51 days,
then covered their murder trial. I, uh,
covered Oklahoma City bombing thing and aftermath. I,
I felt that there were more, to me, a cult than preppers. They just happened to,
you know, being due in that other thing. You know, we, we got a,
a lesson here in Texas back in February of 2021,
in which we just about lost the entire power grid during a record
cold front with ice.
There were elderly people that literally froze to death in their homes and their
lounge shares. What do you say in the wake of something like that, that,
that the kinds of basic things we should be prepared for?
I was in San Antonio in January of this year when the ice storm came in
this year. So I know that Texas is not ready for ice storms.
I know that the palm trees that people put in their front yards,
if they're not properly cared for, they're going to lose that investment,
no doubt about it. You get a little bit of ice and the whole state shuts down.
When we look at Texas and you look at what happened,
the interesting thing is that cold front didn't last forever.
It lasted this time a few days,
and I was able to fly outta San Antonio Airport, no problem.
But for about 72 hours,
which is the given understanding of how long,
nine out of 10 emergencies last for in 72 hours, you need to address warmth.
You need to address water, food, and sanitation.
And people forget about the sanitation aspect because your
pipes could burst,
which means that you now just have a toilet that will work
if you manually flush it by adding water into the bowl.
But additional water won't show up unless you've filled up the toilet, uh,
filled up the tub, or you have gallon jugs of water nearby. So I would say,
don't forget about the sanitation. And then once you do that,
you start looking at how can you make your house the greatest indoor camping
experience ever? And really it comes down to wearing extra clothing.
It comes down to closing off parts of the house that you're not going to need to
go into. So you are able to warm it with your body heat,
and you're able to warm it with candles.
If you're okay with having a candle in your house and you're not worried about,
you know, cat knocking it over, or kids putting something over it,
after you close off your house,
the spots that you don't need and you kind of trap in the heat,
so you don't bleed heat, then you just make sure you have enough water,
extra warm clothing. You could easily,
easily purchase emergency hand warmers, the chemical variety.
And if you were to put those against your body every eight hours,
like the life of the chemical hand warmer,
you could easily get through 72 hours with a,
a box for each person in your home. And it doesn't cost much.
So if you have a good set of warm clothing and you have chemical hand warmers,
artificial source of heat, very easy to get by after that,
it comes down to cooking.
And there are plenty of ways that you can cook indoors.
There are plenty of foods that do not need to be reheated in order to be
consumed. I mean, you can get by with so many different high energy,
high calorie bars, cliff bars, range meal bars,
gorp, right? Good old raisins and peanuts. And at the end of the day,
you have to remember, it's a finite, finite emergency power will be restored.
People will come by to, to check on you. Grocery stores will reopen.
We had a blackout here in December of last year where all of
Moore County lost power for three to five days.
But if you traveled outside of Moore County, you could find gasoline,
you could find groceries, you could find bags of ice at night.
It got dark enough and cold enough where you could take food and put it
outside, and you don't have to worry about the refrigerator.
So I'll say that it's not difficult,
but you need to plan in advance to make your way through one of those
emergencies.
What do you think some of the potential survival situations are for this country
that we need to be prepared for? And if you're traveling overseas.
Well, blackout is one that does happen. Uh,
we saw one here in Moore County when substations were knocked out.
We know that there is absolutely,
absolutely a weakness to our infrastructure when it comes to the power grid.
So you have to be ready for the blackout. That's something that,
I mean, how far do you wanna stretch your preps?
There are people who will prepare just to stay indoors.
There are people that will say, well, I'm not gonna let it affect my commute.
I've got a generator at work. Life is gonna go on. I mean,
how far do you want to take your prep for a blackout? That is, uh,
in my opinion, one of the top ones. Regionally,
we have different national natural disasters that take place.
Florida just got hit with a hurricane. The northeast has blizzards.
The Midwest has, uh, tornadoes. You look at the West coast, they have wildfires.
So you start,
have to start looking at where you live and start planning for those accordingly
as well. Now, internationally, internationally,
they don't have the same level of security that we have here. Now,
there are some exceptions to that. Switzerland, very, very safe country,
Israel, very, very progressive when it comes to safety.
But there are countries that border other countries that don't necessarily
care about the people. They let in their, their borders,
and they let people cross, you know, without any scrutiny. So I would say,
you know, when you're traveling,
be prepared for civil unrest where it could be new
politician coming into power.
It could be a new law that maybe you've been, you haven't been tracking,
but maybe there's talk of, you know,
workers getting paid X amount or not getting paid enough, whatever it may be.
So with that being said,
like you have to look at the local news wherever you're traveling and get an
idea of, you know,
what the climate is politically and socially now, across the nation.
A aside from the natural disasters and aside from the blackout,
I mean, there is the possibility that so many things could happen,
but there's a low probability that they will.
And you can live very paranoid if you're trying to avoid
everything that's possible. I mean,
is it possible that the same type of attack that
happened on nine 11 happens in the building that I'm in right now? Yeah,
it's very possible.
What is the probability next to nothing like 0, 0, 0, 0,
a hundred times 1%? Right?
So we need to look at what is both possible and probable,
and that is really how you should be planning as you travel. Um,
but the best way to do that is to just be alert, be aware,
ask questions before you go join local discussion boards of a neighborhood
that you're visiting and, you know, ask people there. You know,
that's really your best defense is to,
to just be aware of what could happen and then plan ahead of time. What.
Is there one piece of equipment that people should always
have with them?
Gosh, I mean, I know personally a carry a Swiss Army knife every single day,
and that Swiss Army knife is legal in every single state. Yeah.
I do the same.
You know, and I also have other knives on me,
but those are not the ones that I pull out from day to day to do
daily tasks. But that Swiss Army knife has gotten me out of a lot of trouble,
and it's allowed me to teach classes over the years and,
and camp and live in the great outdoors. I mean,
I've cleaned fish in Alaska with it,
and I've done all sorts of stuff with that knife. A lighter,
a big lighter goes a long way.
And it's only 99 cents a flashlight goes a very long way.
And you'll probably use a small AAA flashlight or micro U s b
flashlight that's rechargeable. You'll use that every single day,
but you're probably not gonna use your tourniquet every single day. So again,
you look at the, the different items that you may need,
and if you do need something than tomorrow,
you throw that item in a small Ziploc bag and you put it in your briefcase or
your backpack or whatever. And over the days of, say,
like a month or a few months, you start noticing the things that you're like,
wow, I, I'm glad I had that with me.
And what you're starting to carry is an emergency kit because you're dealing
with daily emergencies. You might say, oh,
my phone is running outta battery power. I wish I had an extra charger.
Then you throw that in that bag, you might say, oh, I ran out of,
of battery power here. You might throw a couple cr 1 23 batteries in there.
You might say, well, I wish I had the ability to tie something down.
So you throw a little bit of para quarter duct tape, and next thing you know,
you have this emergency kit, and you'll feel naked if you're without it,
and you'll understand the value of preparedness.
It's actually a virtue because we don't wanna be people who,
when something bad happens, someone says, well,
can that guy get it done or not? And if they say, oh, they,
that person couldn't, couldn't get it done,
that person couldn't be part of the solution. You don't want to be that.
It feels good when someone says, oh, thank God, Kevin's here.
Thank God Robert's here. You know, like, that is a great feeling.
And it's one that reinforces preparedness every single day.
You don't ever want to not be that guy or that gal that someone needs
when something needs to be done.
Kind of getting to the end here,
let's go back for a moment to personal protection.
One of the things that's going on around the country are these gangs coming into
brand name retail places and just clinging them out.
If you find yourself caught in something like that, what's, what's your advice?
So my advice, if someone gets caught in,
say like a Nordstrom or a phi or a big department store,
'cause they're targeting department stores,
but they're also targeting stores that are in a strip mall.
My advice is go to the back room. Don't try to go out the front door.
Every store that you're going to go into is going to have a back exit,
and it's usually through the store room where they keep the inventory of shoes
and they keep the back stock of all the clothing. By law,
it's gotta be identified as an exit. So you'll just follow the exit signs.
My advice is if there are people who came in through that front door and they're
just grabbing things,
and many times what you'll see is you'll know you're in a bad store, by the way,
, if you walk in and some of the coat hangers look like a question mark,
and some of the coat hangers look like the mirror image of a question mark,
and they alternate those,
because what happens is people will come in and they'll grab a handful of shirts
or jackets and then yank 'em off to the right if they all look like question
marks. So if that's happened before,
stores will get in the habit of alternating the coat hangers and putting a
stop on the front. So you might wanna shop elsewhere if you walk in,
and the clothing islands immediately look like that from the get-go.
Now, as far as what you should do,
do not go out the exit that they're going out in that moment.
They're looking for property, they're looking for anything that they can steal.
They're already committed to stealing from a store.
I don't see why they would not steal from you. So in that moment,
when all eyes are on the front door,
I would run out the back door. And if you're saying, I need to get out of here,
you know, I'm, I'm, I'm afraid for my life, who's stopping you?
It would be in your best circumstance to run out the back door.
And everyone came in from the store room and no one is guarding that back door.
And you just get out of that and you put distance between you and the people who
have friends waiting at that car. The other thing is,
there are sales clerks that have confronted these
looters. Now, back in the eighties and the nineties,
this happened in New York City. It was called, uh, wilding.
So now they call it a flash mob because of the whole dance craze thing.
But in the eighties or nineties, gangs would do this in New York called wilding,
and it's nothing new. And insurance will usually cover property,
but many stores have rules in place where they say,
do not confront people trying to steal because people will
possibly pull a firearm. And if that's the case, then it's on you.
Let insurance do its job.
Your best bet that you can do is just try to get a good idea of who's doing it.
Most people cover their face, get an idea of what the car looks like,
call it in right away, right? I mean, you can do that,
but I would not go out that same door that, you know,
someone just came in and now they're going back out.
You don't know who's on the other side of that door.
You don't know if maybe that's the next new wave of people that are
flash mobbing where they're trying to go after customers who are afraid.
So go out the back door.
From your students. Are you hearing about any other trends like this for,
in terms of people should be concerned about for their personal safety?
So I mean, aside from going into stores,
there is absolutely a trend of people checking doors
in driveways at 2, 3, 4 in the morning,
and the police have no response,
absolutely no response to this,
because these gangs are 100% coordinated,
and they make it a competition to see who can get the most stuff.
Now in the news,
there are examples of people confronting people in their driveway and
they are getting shot at. Now, that to me, is a serious threat,
and it's something that could happen to you.
So I would advise you before you leave your car for the night,
pull on that door handle, get in the habit. If you have a a key fob,
close the door, hit the key fob, check the handle, walk inside,
put those keys down.
There aren't many stories of people having windows broken in when
all they're doing is checking door handles. Now,
there are stories in California, there are stories in San Antonio,
there are stories in major metropolitan areas where people will break a window
to steal change out of a cup.
So don't leave anything in plain sight and lock your doors.
And the other thing is don't confront the people who are trying to steal from
you. I.
Wanna close out talking about your high school history teaching.
If you could be the education king for the day and go back,
what would you change that would improve the education of our high school and
junior high students?
Immediately,
what I would do to improve education is I would hold parents accountable.
And what I mean by that is parents are the missing
equation in education today. Over the years that I taught 14 years,
I saw a gradual change from parents coming in and parents
saying, what can we do to help my child succeed to
what are you doing to make my child fail? What, what are you doing wrong? Right?
And it was a shift,
and part of that came in with parent access to the grade book.
I would rather have parents come in during parent conferences and say,
let's sit down and talk about my kids' grades,
but I only had five minutes with each parent in a two hour block from six
o'clock until eight o'clock.
Every five minutes there's a new parent and you can't really do a deep dive and
you don't really hear from the parents. Or the parents would say, uh oh,
I don't have time for this. Tell me what's working. I'll do it at home. Well,
many times parents would not be held accountable. Um,
parents would,
would be quick to yell at the teachers instead of saying,
what can I do to help you at home? It was, why is my kid failing?
You're a terrible teacher, da da, da.
They would take the kid's side as opposed to being in it together,
right? Like I truly believe that it's a community effort. What I would do,
not only for parent accountability, I would get students involved.
I would get high performing students to tutor the students that don't perform so
great, right? I would absolutely,
absolutely make it mandatory that there are these summits
where kids are not forced to do standardized testing,
but they get a chance to see all the different jobs that are out there that the
Board of Ed won't necessarily show them.
Because the board of Ed usually says all students should be college ready. Well,
what if a kid finds out when he is 14 or a kid finds out in his senior year or
her senior year, I really want to do this job,
give me the classes my final year to get me to that job.
That doesn't require college, but the board of Ed says, no, no, no.
You have to take this class to make you college ready.
That's a disservice to kids. So I think it needs an overhaul.
I don't think the solution is every kid gets homeschooled because not every
parent is a capable educator.
I do think there will always be a place for public education,
but it needs a serious overhaul.
In closing, here's my reporter's recap and reflections.
As Kevin Estella stressed survival depends on preparedness.
For starters, he recommends carrying a tourniquet, good flashlight, big,
lighter, a feral rod,
which is a fire starter that can be used as an emergency signal and a
bandana.
His book is titled 101 Skills You Need To Survive In The Woods.
A second book covering Advanced Skills is on the way.
I have placed links to his resources in the show notes.
You've been listening to the True Crime Reporter podcast. Stay true,
stay safe,
and stay tuned for more stories from inside the crime scene tape.
I'm Robert Riggs Reporting.