That’s generally good for mobs, but this is a different situation. They have a small pack with a leader, they have targeted you, stalked you. They have decided in advance that you will be beaten. They walk up, make some claim that provides the facade of them being the victim (you eyein’ me girl?) and commence the beating. The deer can’t negotiate with the wolves intent on eating it. But if the deer turns into a bear and kills the alpha male, it is likely the wolves will scatter. That is the applicable pack dynamics.
I was surrounded by a Mexican gang once and got away without a bad word spoken much in the way you spoke about. But they were just scoping me out, they hadn’t decided what to do with the gringo initially. It’s not the same situation, not the same group dynamics.
It is very important to distinguish between fiction and reality, for example the scene in Falling Down, where the white America office worker man takes on two Mexican gang members—that scene is fiction. Or the scenes in any action movie, You must wholly discount it, all the dynamics, tactics and reactions in it. Reacting to gangs according to the plots of great fiction writers is not reality-based.
YouTube is a great new resource for learning about the reality of mobs and gangs at the point where risk and danger becomes violence and assault. There are few resources for learning about the reality of mobs and gangs prior to that point. That is because as you found with the experience you had, no harm, no foul. No violence actualizes, so the dynamics and events pass by unspoken of, or forgotten.
Like Cesar Milan found, and became (an awesome) expert by doing, is that only by going in harm’s way can one observe such behavior and test theories of dealing with these mobs.
In our time, now, that is research that NEEDS to be done, imo. How to go about it? THAT’s another story entirely.
When I’ve had the opportunity to wade into such situations, I’m not taking notes, although one’s senses are amped-up, ones memory-recording is diminished in many ways, one becomes focused on a few key things of the time, mainly breaking the “point” of violence and dampering or dispersing the mob. What I am not is a scientific observer. But, as I suggested, I think we NEED scientific observations of mob formations, and dynamics.
With those we can better give solid core advice as to how stop mobs without excessive counter violence, even turning the situation into a win-win. The first win being defusing the mob of the moment, and the second win by helping to train the actors—the feral kids in a modern mob—to become more responsible and less likely to join into or grow violent, feral mobs.