Most of us don’t want to stand by when someone else is in difficulty or when we see others vandalising, bullying or being threatening. We have a natural urge to try to cool arguments or prevent fighting but in today’s streets such actions feel very risky. Worse still, there are frequent reports of people who were trying to help getting hurt. Mostly we feel unable to do anything and this sense of powerlessness leaves us feeling bad about ourselves and sends all the wrong messages to those who are behaving antisocially.

We need a way to respond, somewhere in between keeping our heads down and doing nothing and intervening and putting ourselves and perhaps others in danger. We need to be able :

to read the risks of a situation continuously and consistently,

to have some ideas of what might be said or done;

to be able to treat with respect those whose behaviour we reject;

to stand up for ourselves and our values without escalating confrontation;

to find ways to change people’s behaviour without either party ‘losing face’, and to have some confidence in our own capacity.

Whether you and you neighbours are concerned about vandalism, threatening behaviour, keeping the peace between embittered neighbours or other anti-social behaviour the training Dfuse offers will help because all the trainers we engage have dealt with many situations like these as serving police officers. The professionalism, humour and street-level experience of our trainers are amongst the most common elements appreciated by participants on our courses.