Mugger roll a.k.a. thowdown money

[seamusTX]

Starting a new thread to avoid thread drift.

Massad Ayoob wrote that he carries a $5 bill rubber-banded around a matchbook, ready to flip onto the sidewalk, in order to distract panhandlers who seem to be working up to a mugging. He said he's been called a coward for it, but in his view it gives him another option.

In the book In the Gravest Extreme, he said he started doing that before he was a cop, when he lived in New York City.

I'm kind of skeptical that he still does it, now that he can arrest people.

I think it's a good idea, though you need to use more then $5 now (In the Gravest Extreme was written in 1980). I used to carry a mugger roll when I lived in Chicago, and I had to give it up once.

One technique that I've seen recommended is to act nervous and drop the money so that the thief has to pick it up. However, if he is armed, there's a chance he'll make you pick it up.

- Jim

[Xander]

I agree. As I said in the other thread, distraction is a time-tested and well-proven tactic, and just about anything that improves the odds in your favor is a good idea in my opinion.

[ELB]

I believe I first read Ayoob's matchbook trick in one of his columns (he does reuse material from time-to-time ). He noted that he had written on it before and people had written him letters calling him a coward (in less polite terms). I have the memory impression that he still used it, even as a cop. I suspect that he may not necessarily have wanted to identify himself as a cop in every instance -- badge & gun or not, he is at a disadvantage in a surprise mugging, and it may be better to disengage right now, run around the corner, and call for back up. Discretion being the better part of valor and all that. Wouldn't blame him.

In any case, I have wondered if I should have a "burglar's purse" for the house. Many burglaries seem to be of the model of smash-in-a-door-or-window-grab-some-easily-portable swag-and-boogie. I thought maybe I should leave out some reasonably obvious cash and jewelry, a watch or two, with the strategy that a hit and run burglar might take the easy stuff and leave, rather than spend any more time rifling everything, digging through the closets, hammering on my fire safes and lockboxes... And even the more thorough burglars would probably take it. Of course the cash serial numbers would be recorded, the jewelry cheap and photographed, maybe with a pendant with our names on it, as well as the watch, so I could just hand it all the cops in case they came across the miscreants or the pawnshops recognized it.

elb

[nitrogen]

Whatever gets you away alive and with the fewest entanglements with the law works for me.

I used to pretend I didn't speak english. I'd ramble in bits of Yiddish and Hebrew to them, and that usually worked.

[KBCraig]

I have the memory impression that he still used it, even as a cop.

I will guarantee you that he's never been mugged in New Hampshire, where he lives. Not that there aren't occasional robberies down along the Mass. border, but lemme tell you... you only think Texans are well armed!

At a committee meeting last year, one citizen who was speaking asked, "Do you have any idea how many of these people carry guns regularly?" The Representative didn't blink an eye before asking: "Do you have any idea how many us at this table are carrying right now?"

(Nothing threatening on either side, it was a friendly exchange.)