Former US secret service agent reveals why the way you walk could make you a target for serious crime
If you’ve always thought you’re unlikely to be targeted by criminals, your walk might end up being the reason you end up being selected from afar.
Is it your gait? Your heavy steps, or the way your arms swing?
An ex-secret service agent has revealed all, and you might start to change how you walk in the future.
Evy Poumpouras, a former Secret Service agent, has had notable high-profile jobs such as protecting former Presidents Barack Obama and George H.W. Bush. Her work has seen her receive a US Secret Service Medal of Valor for her work on 9/11, before working with the Secret Service for 12 years.
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She revealed all to podcaster Steven Bartlett on his Dairy Of A CEO show, and her reasons why crime follows people with a certain walk, is very interesting.
Poumpouras explained that there is a study out there which has recorded people walking in New York City.
From there, they took the footage and plated it to convicted felons in prison to see who they would be likely to pick as a victim just from the way they walked.
Scarily, they all picked the same people.
Poumpouras said there are three different types of walks: the 'sloppy,' the insecure, and the confident walker.
“One walk was: ‘I'm walking, I'm sloppy, I'm not playing attention, I'm just in my own space. I have really no deliberate purpose in the way I'm moving my body,’” she told Bartlett.
This is apparently the walk that criminals defined as 'easy prey'.
But so is the second walk.
She said that walk ‘is small, more timid, "I'm kind of not comfortable, I'm not paying attention”’, type of thing.
Anyone who was typed in the study as having either walk were immediately flagged by the felons, and then revealed that they didn’t seem to be interested in the confident walkers- the third group typed in New York.
Why? Because they’re deliberate.
She said they didn’t pick those ‘whose walks weren't sloppily big, weren't too small, it was right in the middle, deliberate’.
'"I'm in control of my body, I'm looking around, I'm present, I own my space,"' she explained how the deliberate walker would be as a person.
“That person, I want nothing to do with. Those group of people were not picked to be targets," she said of what criminals believed.
The researchers behind the 2013 study say the results could go on to explain why some people become repeat victims: “[S]ocial predators are attracted to external displays of vulnerability.”
So, I guess I'm no longer going to daydream and walk alone. It’s time to strut.
Britt Jones