Active threat on life, how does one prepare to defend themselves?

sexmag

So the mrs shows me an article about the former East 17 member Brian Harvey and how 2 weeks ago the police showed up to his door and told him there was a valid threat on his life.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-6027009/East-17-star-Brian-Harvey-received-death-threat.html

What stuck out to me was the following line from the police

'I also stress that the passing of this information by me, in no way authorises you to take any action which would place you in contravention of the law, i.e. carrying weapons for self-defence or assaulting others.'

Now while I and most other people understand we cant just have people walking around with guns and knives waiting for attackers to strike and in the case of brian here im glad he cant as he seems a bit mentally unstable from what ive heard and read, which can result in mistaken identities etc.

And in this case they also say Although Metropolitan Police will take what steps it can to minimise the risk, the police cannot protect you from this threat on a day-to-day, hour-by-hour basis. (They gardai have no problem doing it for certain criminals in dublin city at the moment but thats not my point)

But it got me thinking, in a case where someones life if actively at risk what precautions can a person take to defend themselves? Obviously people will want to continue on with thier life but have a further problem to contend with and they cant carry anything to defend themselves, what can they do?

Is there a manual or something police give to help prepare them? Do they jsut continue on with fear or are there any legal precautions they can take and do?

Peregrinus

Even leaving legal constraints aside, it's generally true that avoiding an attack is a far more effective way of protecting yourself than preparing to meet it. I realise there's a tension with your other stated objective ("people will want to continue with their life"), but you have to ask yourself which objective you're going to prioritise - not getting hurt, or carrying on with your daily life without change?

Depending on the nature and the source of the threat, there are obvious things you can do - vary your route to work, for example; make sure your home security measures are up to snuff and operate them consistently. These things are not too disruptive. Check under your car before you get into it. More disruptive measures involve things like not going out alone, or even moving house temporarily or permanently. These do disprupt your life, obvious, but they will be much more effective than carrying a can of mace or whatever.

As against measures like this, carrying a knuckleduster or a knife or a gun, even if it were legal, provides no material protection. It's useless against an attack that isn't an immediate close confrontation, and even in such an attack the assailant chooses the ground, the time and the approach, has the advantage of surprise and is probably at least as well-armed as you are, so any sense of security you get from packing heat is probably illusory.

If you have the money you can hire a security consultant to advise you how to respond to a threat of this kind. Their advice will nearly all be about vigilance, awareness, caution and precaution and hardly all about tooling up. The reason for this is not so much that tooling up is borderline illegal as that it has mimimal benefits, compared to the avoidance techniques.

sexmag

@peregrinus Thanks for your reply, thats the kind of stuff i thought one might do. Only issue some people might have is they may have to do it for the rest of their life as they would be in a literal sense "looking over their shoulder" but i guess they have to weigh up living safely or otherwise

In situations like this is there ever a time the police with notify the person with the threat to advise that it has been downgraded or is a case that after a threat has been made it is active for life?

Peregrinus

Presumably that varies from case to case, but it's hard to imagine many circumstances where such a high-level threat would continue indefinitely, with no let-up. Even Salman Rushdie came out of hiding, and now lives quite openly.

And, no, I doubt that the police tell you about this and then bugger off, never to be seen again. The fact that they don't have the resources. and/or judge the threat credible enough, to provide you with round-the-clock bodyguards doesn't mean that they ignore the threat, or make no investigations. Presumably you discuss the matter with them periodically, and they tell you what their current assessment is.