B.C.I Protection Services hosted a Women’s Safety Awareness Day on 5 August to educate women about real-life experiences during a crime.
The event was held at Jaguar Land Rover West Rand in Weltevreden Park and saw women and children come out in their finest to learn about safety tips and other useful precautions from the security experts, police and paramedics.
A hijacking ordeal was demonstrated and discussed by B.C.I’s instructor Brad Larsen, who shared vital tips about situational awareness. ER24 was also given an opportunity to demonstrate their swift response when attending to a scene of an incident.
Larsen said situational awareness is a process of observation in which a person tries to stay relaxed but alert, “meaning you know what’s happening around you.” He added that the concept is followed by orientation, that is, being in a position where you try to establish the baseline of your environment by trying to spot the normal and the abnormal in the area.
Larsen also advised women to be observant when travelling to their homes by using a concept he calls the A-game. “Play the A-game,” he said. “This is a game you play when you are travelling to your house. You start by searching for something that stands out.
You start playing the game two sets of traffic lights before you get home, to see if you’re being followed or if something is abnormal,” Larsen explained.
Honeydew Police Station’s Warrant Officer Karen Jacobs also emphasised that “As soon as you get close to your home [make sure] you switch off that cellphone and music and start focussing on your surroundings.”
Jacobs also stressed the importance of knowing the police emergency number (10111), and urged residents to keep their doors and windows locked at all times and refrain from giving handouts at intersections.
Ward 89 councillor, Amelia Bester, encouraged residents to avoid singling themselves out. “In the society we live in, we’ve desensitised ourselves from the need of others in an effort to protect our own,” she said.
She added, “Although it is important to be safety conscious, we should peek over our high walls in an effort to be the helping hand in someone else’s hour of need.”
Bester also suggested that residents connect with others through Residents’ Associations, awareness groups and security forums.
Go to the Roodepoort Northsider’s online photo gallery for more images from the event.
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