Complacency kills

Let’s start with a definition of “Normalcy Bias”

Normalcy bias

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The normalcy bias, or normality bias, is a belief people hold when facing a disaster. It causes people to underestimate both the likelihood of a disaster and its possible effects, because people believe that things will always function the way things normally have functioned. This may result in situations where people fail to adequately prepare themselves for disasters, and on a larger scale, the failure of governments to include the populace in its disaster preparations. About 70% of people reportedly display normalcy bias in disasters.

Now, disasters can be many things, including very personal disasters that only directly affect an individual or small group. It need not be an earthquake, tornado or crash of the national power grid.

It’s easy to convince yourself that as nothing really bad will happen to you, since nothing really bad has happened before. In law enforcement circles, a common theme in officer survival training is fighting the basic human urge to lapse into complacency. Even law enforcement officers, facing real threats on a regular basis can die because of “normalcy bias”.

I have observed with the legalization of marijuana in various states, a lot of new “High Net Worth” (No pun intended) individuals being created from the legal industry. I have also observed that the new money is resulting in a lot of very noticeable, flashy high-end vehicles being purchased and driven and lots of cash being flaunted to attract attention. Unfortunately, sometimes this bring the wrong kind of attention, as seen below:

http://www.ibtimes.com/man-convicted-kidnapping-mutilating-california-marijuana-dispensary-owner-2637545

If the above victim had professionally vetted his employees, he might have avoided the nightmare he survived. If he had an Executive Protection detail, it is very unlikely this would have happened to him. Aside from the physical security provided by an EP detail, surveillance detection and counter-surveillance operations would have detected the pre-attack surveillance of the dispensary owner.

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