Have you ever been worried about your well-being while hosting an open house or showing a property to a client who made you uneasy? This two-part series on REALTOR® safety is a must-listen! Debra DeWaal of Safe & Sound Safety Training, Lynn Dueck of the Calgary Police Services Victim’s Unit and Jennifer Gilbert, AREA President, chat about trusting your “gut” and how saying less on social media can help keep you safe.
Have you ever been worried about your well-being while hosting an open house or showing a property to a client who made you uneasy? This two-part series on REALTOR® safety is a must-listen! Debra DeWaal of Safe & Sound Safety Training, Lynn Dueck of the Calgary Police Services Victim’s Unit and Jennifer Gilbert, AREA President, chat about trusting your “gut” and how saying less on social media can help keep you safe.
Welcome to In Your AREA, a podcast designed by AREA to update, educate, and refresh realtors, brokers, and industry stakeholders on topics that matter most to you. Listen on the go, in your car, at a coffee shop, wherever your day takes you. This is a podcast designed with today's busy realtor in mind. And now here's your host for the second half of realtor, be safe, Jennifer Gilbert.
Jennifer:We were just discussing how our social media is out there. Another tool that we can use as realtors is when we know that we're going to meet a client that we're unfamiliar with, if we haven't had the opportunity to meet them in the office, social media does work both directions. We can do a little bit of homework on them as well. That adds to that safety perspective to see what we can find out there. Also having all those other buddy tools and systems or even just bringing somebody else with you. The next thing I kind of wanted to discuss was just going into actual, not just how we present ourselves, blinged out with jewelry but property. We're in people's property, we have property, and we're responsible for it. Any thoughts on the property crime aspect of things as well as opposed to the personal aspects?
Debra:Yes, because your response should be much, much different. We're talking about a personal attack or a personal crime and we talk about having a clear bottom line, having a plan and that could involve a physical component. I do not recommend for people that if someone tries to steal your stuff, whatever that might be, that there should be a physical component at all. Don't ever fight for things. That's sort of a really big point because it's not worth it. All that bling, all those things can be replaced so never get into a physical altercation over things. Having said that, we can prevent these scenarios from occurring in the first place. One of the things that we were kind of discussing was carjackings. We were talking, prior to being on air here about Kijiji and someone trying to sell their car and having to meet in a dark parking lot. This can potentially turn into a violent crime against the victim who's trying to sell the car or even just his/her car being stolen. This is a perfect setup when you think about it for realtors because they can be taken out to isolated areas very easily because that's your job. So how do you prevent becoming a victim of a carjacking? A couple things, obviously, as I said earlier, get there early. Scope out your environment and see who's there. If you show up in some parking lot and you see two other cars idling with four people in each car, that's probably something I used to call, a clue. Then, of course, if in the car jacking thing, someone comes up and they're already at your window and you don't feel good, lock your door. If they're trying to talk to you through the closed window, drive away. If it's evolving in real time where you don't know if it's actually going to become a carjacking and you want to speak to someone, roll down your window a centimeter. People can actually hear you through closed windows. Do you have any idea how many impaired drivers I talked to through close windows? They can hear you. So have your doors locked at all times. I just want to segue a little bit into what if you're in the vehicle with them, because this would be a common practice with realtors. So you're driving out and about, you've been directed to go to location A which, you're not feeling comfortable for whatever reason and your intuition is telling you this is going sideways very fast. What do you do then? I'd like to suggest you could jump out of your car. Again, it's just stuff. If they take your car, there's something called insurance, you're going to be okay. Making sure you had your cell phone with you, as you mentioned earlier, is a prime example of the necessity of it.
Jennifer:And it needs to be charged. Don't go into the boonies showing acreages with your phone at 13%.
Debra:It sounds like you're speaking from experience. Having those things planned ahead of time. As far as being in the home, when you're showing homes and you're responsible for your client's property, that's being switched on. That's not you on your phone, checking your emails or texting someone back. You're watching people as they're going through a home that you've been entrusted with. What are they doing in each room, etc. Not in a creepy way, but you're just keeping an eye out for things like people putting things in their pockets. Again, you're back to awareness, situational awareness, and paying attention. My big point in that is if it is a property crime, give it to them. Do not fight for it. As you mentioned, prevention, don't be coming in with thousands of dollars worth of jewelry and$20 bills hanging out of your pockets.
Jennifer:For our clients, with their homes as well. I always suggest to my clients to put away those family jewels, put away those important items, you don't want to leave your jewelry box sitting on the dresser while having an open house or even just while it's listed. Put those special things away. Nobody needs to see them. They're there to look at your house, not your stuff.
Debra:Which applies for your own vehicle when you're driving people around. Having things out in the open? Possibly not, lock it up in the trunk.
Jennifer:I just wanted to go back to your conversation about pulling up to a situation, feeling uncomfortable, rolling the window, and speaking to them. Everything is telling you, no, I'm not getting out. At that point, I think it's really important to go back to the fact that your personal safety is far more important than hurting somebody's feelings or being polite. If I have ever had to say to somebody,"look, I'm feeling uncomfortable with this situation," I didn't lose the house deal over it. Not ever. If anything, they respected me more for the fact that I could stand up for myself. I can look at a situation and say, look, this isn't right, I'm just going to need to reschedule this for tomorrow or I'm going to need 15 minutes and have my safety measure and my tool in place so that I'm comfortable in moving forward.
Lynn:I think in those situations you should not feel bad about using a white lie or something. When you're talking to somebody, say an emergency has come up, I'm really sorry, I'm going to have to reschedule and I will get back to you. I apologize.
Debra:I have a cheeky sort of style to me so for me it's always that I have to see a guy about a thing. I was followed at a park in Calgary once. I was walking my dog and I noticed someone behind me and I was not in a great state of awareness because I was in my own head. Let's face it, we've all done it. As he got closer he was following me in an area that was unusual. I wasn't on a path system so I clearly knew he was following me. This is me as a cop and even me, off duty of course, in my own head was going, oh no, he couldn't possibly be after me. Does he know I'm a cop? All these stupid things that are actually ridiculous because the answers are no to all of those things. It did, for fraction of a second, even in my mind say, well, you're going to look stupid if you confront the situation. As fast as it came in, is as fast as it went out because I realized this is ridiculous. I straightened up my body posture. I stood up to all, I turned around and put my hand out in his face. I won't say exactly on air what I said to him because that would be inappropriate and unprofessional, but it was something along the lines of what are you doing and why you following me? His response was palpable because if he thought I was a victim, as he did approaching me, my entire change of not looking like I could care less if I was looking stupid changed his mind completely. He hightailed out of there without another word. If he was there to ask me the time, who cares? I strongly suspect it wasn't. Then I went home, changed my underwear and called the police. I'm just kidding. It was the other way around I phoned the police and then I changed my underwear. I'm still kidding. The point is that the fear of looking foolish, get rid of it. Because if something is alerting you in your gut that you can't consciously identify in the moment, which is fair, you probably will figure it out later. Pay attention to it. Who cares about losing the deal if that's in your mind. Hesitation causes victimizing.
Lynn:You can think about the whole situation after and the pros and cons and go back to what may or may not have happened. At that moment, you have to listen to what your gut is telling you.
Debra:You might have a great story at dinner to tell your family about how you went ballistic over some poor guy who tried to ask you the time. You trusted your intuition and at the end of the day, my tagline is, who goes home? You go home. Pay attention to that. Don't worry about feeling foolish about it. Having said that again, if it's property crime, give it to them. It's not worth it. In fact, toss it over their head and run in the other direction. Don't toss and run in the same direction because that just causes confusion. Property crime is very different. Just give it to them.
Jennifer:We've had a lot of discussion about personal safety technology, being prepared, and intuition. Let's move on to what do we do with this after the fact? Something's happened to us, something's happened to one of our coworkers. How do we deal with this from the victim perspective and some of the emotions and feelings that come from being victimized?
Lynn:For us with the Calgary Police Victim Assistance Support Team, VAST as is what we call ourselves now, we support victims of crime and trauma. So we would be coming in if something happened, if something did occur. We get our information through the Calgary police files in different ways, we will sometimes get a call. It could be 24/7 in the middle of the night that an event has occurred and they would like us to, in person or by phone or whatever works best for the victim to support them in the moment and also offer referrals and information to them going forward. We also have a call center where we get what we call the'download'. Personal crimes, not property crimes, that happen every 24 hours within Calgary and under the Canadian Victim's Bill of Rights, victims of a crime have the right to be contacted and supported after a crime is committed. So we connect with every file in the city, that happens every 24 hours. A lot of times it's by phone, mail, or in person. We continue to support people in cases where charges may be laid as the victim goes to court. We do court support, we continue to support sometimes for years to help people through the process. While we're doing everything we can to try and avoid the victimization of people that are in the real estate profession and in citizens throughout Calgary, we know it happens and it can happen, but also want you to know that there is support and you are entitled by law to receive certain supports. That in a nutshell, is our role. Deb, you were talking about what happens at a police perspective and I can tell you when we get the call, in my role as one of the coordinators, I could be on call over night tonight and be the person that the police will call from the scene and say we need VAST.
Debra:Police love victim services and I can't say enough about it. If anyone listening has experienced some type of crime and they're maybe not coping as well as they thought they maybe could be. I can't recommend victim services enough. This is a group of people, this is all over the province by the way, there are victim services attached to every RCMP detachment as well so it's available everywhere throughout Canada. This is what happens from my shoes as a police officer, I attend an assault, a domestic, and even a robbery for that matter. When the victim is in a state where we know they need extra support, the beautiful thing about being a police officer is, we can try for a little bit, but then we have this magical thing called a radio and we can call victim services. We love victim services because then they show up and make everything better. I'm kind of making it a bit glib but victim services is a police officer's best friend because it is traumatic, not just for the victims, but for the family. There's a tidal wave effect in some of these things.
Jennifer:I guess that's one point we can bring up. Say something happened to a certain realtor in an office and they're going through that issue, it actually reverberates out to everybody else too because it becomes this realization of that could've been me.
Lynn:Jen, what can happen, just to let you know that in those cases, we have also gone to businesses where the impact of a trauma has spread out through other people. You're exactly right about those kinds of fears, uncertainties, what do I do? I'm not coping well, I'm not sleeping now, that could've been me etc. We've gone out in pairs and we can arrange to go to a real estate office or to a group and present or talk to the people and try and find out what is going on with them. We don't do a presentation per se, but we really try to see what are the needs of the people that are struggling at that point. We have lists of resources and supports that people can access and then continue to connect with us through our call center. If something else comes up, we will try and do our best to provide resources that may be helpful for people going forward. It isn't a cut and dry thing. It isn't like after two weeks or a month, you should just be over it. Everyone reacts to an event in a different way.
Debra:Plus, then court comes up and possible a year or two later they feel like they've been re-victimized.
Lynn:The re-victimization is a very real thing. It can bring the victim right back to that moment when something happened. With referrals by the victim themselves or police officers, the detectives, or the crown, we support victims through the court process through preliminary hearings and through the trial. Our connection can be for years and throughout that process, victims are entitled to have the right to information. We are able to provide them with the information as to what is going on with the case, when the next dates are, they are allowed to have names of the accused. There's information that they have legal rights to. If people have questions, we are there to help support them. A lot of it starts from that initial contact after an event, after a crime, when victim services originally reaches out. That's our first contact but it can continue on and on from there.
Debra:There have been cases where I've actually referred people that have contacted me to victim services, but they haven't had the police interaction. Because of my background as a former police officer and now I do safety training and consulting, I go out and I speak. I give presentations on the prevention and what to do. Just like what we're talking about today. I've been doing this for quite a while now and I often get emails and phone calls from people who've had even a circumstance like you had, where you're getting stalked or harassed over text all the way to its maybe become a crime, but they don't know what to do. They'll call me because they know I have the background, but they know they're not committing to actually filing a police report. Sometimes, this might sound odd and hopefully I'm not offending victim services, there are circumstances where it might not be the right course of action to phone the police because of different wheels that get put into motion. Again, it really depends on the circumstances, but I get these calls and I know it might not be a police related matter yet or maybe never should be and yet they still need support.
Lynn:Absolutely, we get calls a lot of the times from something that is not police file related. Again, we are able to at least provide some information for them to go forward so they're not just spiraling in phone calls or trying to find numbers that will be the right number or right organization to help.
Jennifer:That's wonderful information to know because I did not know that victim services was available for support to anyone without a police file.
Lynn:It could be that somebody needs some counseling and doesn't have money or doesn't have an employee assistance program or something like that. We can offer some suggestions of places that they can call to help them personally for those emotional supports. If you are listed as a victim on a file, whether charges are laid or not, you are entitled to apply for financial benefits through the Solicitor General of Alberta. There's a form that you fill out and we don't adjudicate it, it's adjudicated in Edmonton at the Solicitor General's office, but people outline how this crime has affected them. Again, charges do not have to be laid in that particular instance. People just are not aware of that. In our contact with victims, we outline that but sometimes, you're still in a state of trauma and shock yourself so a lot of information doesn't sink in. We encourage people to call us.
Jennifer:I think that's important to know as well because like you said, it's always easy for that moment of time to come back and get you two or three years later. Even though you've got the intuition, you've got the awareness, you're paying attention, you have your tools, all of a sudden something can happen that just puts you right back into that situation. Knowing how to deal with perhaps that guilt or feeling like did I do something to make this happen to me? All those types of weird things that our brain does to us when we're victims of crime.
Lynn:Those are common kinds of reactions and things that we hear from victims. People should not feel, whether you're a victim of crime or a traumatic event has happened, that they need to just suck it up. There are supports, there are agencies within the city and the province that are here to help. That's where one of our mandates of support, information, and referrals is. We can try and find those referrals that may be helpful for people to access and move forward and deal with the trauma that may continue.
Jennifer:This is awesome. We've really brought this full circle and it's so great to know that there's so many different opportunities available out there for those who have been harmed. Any other points that you guys wanted to bring up in regards to realtor safety or what we can be doing as realtors or humans out there in the world interacting?
Lynn:Deb, your experience as a CPS officer and the fact that your role now is safety is invaluable. One of the things that I do want to state about the idea when a trauma does occur and say a police officer does call us for support, it does not necessarily mean that we're going to be sending volunteers out at that particular time because we have to be invited and usually the coordinator will talk to the victim themselves. They may be in such a traumatic state or may have people around them for the next few hours and their okay. Then we'll follow up the next day or that kind of thing. I think it's really important that people know that if we're not there at that very moment for whatever reasons that get talked about, there're still not left alone and that we are there to support and I think that's a really important thing to know. But definitely, we have the call center, but we also have the 24 hour call line that the police access us for. We always say, oh, the police want us there because they don't like the crime, but they have to get onto another crime that's happened. That is the reality. What we like to do then is also follow up with the police officers with either an email or something and let them know what's happened as a follow up with us in those calls. Just because I think that it's difficult for these police officers come to an event and then leave and not really know what happened because they're very caring people too.
Debra:You know what I'd like to say to people just in a general sense when it comes to personal safety. One of the risks of a podcast like this is that people will become fearful because we brought it to their attention, that is not our intention. As a matter of fact, we want to have people not be fearful in these circumstances and here's a little tip. If you're feeling uncomfortable, let me put it in broader terms. What I want people to do with this information, go from here and think about all the places in your life that you feel potentially vulnerable, we all have them. If we're human, we have them, my husband had them and he was one of the big tough guys. Now he's not. We all get older, but he has areas of vulnerability because he's wise enough to know that things happen. Evil does exist and some people do have bad intentions. So here's what I want you to do. If you are feeling uncomfortable about any type of situation, whether it is related to your job showing homes, whether it's related to walking and running in parks, it doesn't matter. Whatever it is you do, whatever is the patterns of your life. You feel uncomfortable about something, do two things. Create a bottom line, meaning make a decision. If I was attacked, will I fight or not fight. Simply by making that choice will give the people about a 60% chance of them freezing. God forbid anything happens because they would have thought about it ahead of time. So create a clear bottom line and then make a plan around that situation and then leave it. Do not dwell on the plan. People who dwell on plans, safety plans, become the paranoid thing and that actually becomes a fear ritual, which we want to avoid. So have a clear bottom line, create a plan around whatever that circumstance is that's kind of freaking you out and then leave it. If that situation ever appeared in real life, they will be able to draw upon the decisions they made. Could even be 10 years later. Oh yeah, I decided how I was going to handle this 10 years ago and it will come to you. Ergo sort of preventing that freeze factor again. Be smart, not fearful. Yeah. Have a plan. Tuck it away somewhere. Don't live in fear with it, but know that it's there should you ever need it.
Jennifer:One thing that comes to my mind when you bring up focusing on those places that you could feel fear is not to also make preconceived notions about people or places. Affluence or beautiful hotels or a gorgeous busy park doesn't necessarily equal safety either. You could be in the little listing north of the railroad tracks and be in just as a dangerous position as a multi-million dollar listing.
Lynn:We have preconceived ideas and you have to put those away.
Debra:What does evil look like? It doesn't. That is so true. I'd like to thank you Deb and Lynn for your words of wisdom, some really great communication, some great tips. AREA members, we want to hear from you, your feedback and suggestions for future podcast episodes will be critical to making sure we make this the strongest resource for you. We invite you to send that feedback through communications@albertarealtor.ca. Thanks to all who took the time to listen today. We hope to see you next time we are in your area.