Habits & their Consequences!

Kia Ora,

To continue from the last post lets look at habits & how you can work out what people are going to do or the consequences they may have.

Well first when dealing with crime you know that during a period like now there are gong to be a lot of people out looking for opportunities like the cyclist I saw last week.

Now talking to a retired police officer I know we were both of the opinion that like it used to be get a police patrol in the area. If they were looking as suspected then just that presence would be enough to make them think twice.

But now the police habit has changed & suspicious activity is often not passed on to those on the street & therefore it all becomes reactive, not proactive. Police from our combined sources are now been judged on tickets & arrests, where as in the past a good cop might have no arrests at all, but keeps things under control.

Then on New Years day we had an example of a bad habit that has developed.

I could hear a boy racer trying to do burn outs or doghnuts at intersection nearby & it is a ocmmon occurence. But suddenly hear brakes, then more brakes then boy racer vehicle travelling in short jerks then they come past & stops on our very dangerous corner. Behind it is what looked like a Hummer with a trailer, the driver of the boy racer gets out so the Hummer drives around at which point the boy racer lashes out at the Hummer, jumps back in his vehicle & chases the Hummer. Police are called & again it is like pulling teeth to get the message through but the Hummer must of called police because as we are speaking a police car can be seen heading towards the direction they had taken with all the bells & whistles.

So what is the bad habit here that has developed?

Well there are two sayings "the only crime is getting caught" & "Do the crime do the time." But not today.

I can deduce from the noise & what I saw having both seen this before & being in a similar situations what has happened.
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What I would say has happened is the boy racer has decided to do a doghnut, but part way through the Hummer has come along & not stopped as the boy racer thought he would. Likely they didn't have time too. So there has nearly been an accident, but the boy racer who is blatently in the wrong has shown the increasing bad habit that has emerged.

We get it all the time in Security & I would say it is why police are getting attacked more & why I was attacked a few months ago.

It is the habit that young people in particular believe even though they are the ones breaking the law, you, the person stopping or curtailing their illegal activity, are the one in the wrong. They then believe it is their right to use violence to sort it out, but it is never one on one as another new bad habit is big groups onto one.
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Then there is the very bad habit people have of not wanting to look at possible problems so not preparing. So to force people to do it we carryout Risk assessements.

But New Zealand does not do that. It risk manages without proper risk assessment. So as we say here it is half pie ka pai. Or half a job she'll be right.

For example the New Years gathering in the Square here in Christchurch. Both I & the retired police officer just shook our heads. We knew shortly after the wee shake in September that aftershocks are likely to carry on for months if not years. Not to mention it could be, as history shows happens in NZ, part of a group of big quakes triggered by one .

But within weeks we were getting told there would not be another for at least 50 years if not 500 by some 'experts'. That is not what the evidence says & the fact the Alpine fault is over due for several big ruptures. Just today I received an email from family on the West Coast saying local pilots are reporting a widening of the Alpine Fault. That could be good it could be bad.
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But the New Years event should of been moved to the Hagley Park before the end of September. The aim is not to stop an event but make it safer.

The comment by some idiot official was that safest place from falling buildings was middle of square.

But what about the Human factor?

Your telling everyone that middle is safest place but you have three reactions if there is a quake. One a large number try to get to middle, fighting starts & people are trampled underneath, others freeze & many others just run again people get trampled. This all without even a building falling.
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The bad habit in New Zealand is we forget everything & say it won't happen, it never has even though the week before the exact same thing happened i.e. the Boxing day 4.9 quake which sent some people running & screaming from malls. Now put an estimated 12,000 people in that situation.

Even when you prepare you can't control the human factor.

For example whilst in Baghdad there was a religious festival on & so the security forces put plans in place including no vehicles on the road. As a large group of people were on a bridge in Baghdad moving to a Mosque word spread that there were suicide bombers in amongst them.

Now I was at our villa since there was no vehicle movement some distance away. Suddenly I started hearing screaming & voices, but it was so far off I just thought we may have another large protest coming our way. Passed the information on.

Then shortly after we find out that nearly a thousand people are dead as with people on edge all it needed was one person to light the fuse. Most were trampled or drowned from jumping off the bridge. The Security forces didn't stand a chance in controlling them(although they apparently tried including firing in the air) & neither would our crowd control security(especially at current low standards) when a crowd of that size starts to run.
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New Zealand needs to get out of this bad habit of not doing proper risk assessments & I challenge anyone involved to prove to me that they carried out one for the New Years celebration or have done so for the Rugby World Cup.

Because they haven't!

You only have to look at the Square. Confined space, nervy population, large aftershocks recently.

Or Hagley park wide open spaces, yes a former swamp so possible liquifaction & some trees that could fall over & whats more probably more people would of attended. Also in a large open space people will be less likely to run & if they do less chance of a stampede.

Habits can have consequences. Some good but some extremely bad.

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