I recently taught a class on Diversity and Verbal De-escalation.  There’s no secret information out there on these topics that I release to the participants.  Basically I review things they already know but try to come at them form a different angle.  I try to speak from a position of somebody who has “been in the trenches” so to speak.
The third phase of the class is spent discussing physical, reactive techniques that can be utilized in the event that the participants need to defend themselves or others.  I basically teach the proactive, and parts of the ground survival program of our Protective Thinking series.  
As usual, we give the participants the opportunity to evaluate the class.  While reading one of the evaluations I became very frustrated at the comments.  The writer gave the impression that they felt that the self defense portion of the class was good but it didn’t really pertain to them.  Not while they were at work anyway.
As a result of the comments on this evaluation I took it upon myself to find crime statistics for the city. The crimes were staggering and guess what?  There were actually crimes in the area where the writer works.

As hard as I try it is difficult to make people believe that crime can happen anywhere, to anybody, at anytime.  I can teach all the techniques in the world but if people don’t begin to accept the fact that crime can happen to them and that they need to be prepared to deal with these situations, then all they have really received out of the class in a few hours of exercise.