Explaining the Surrender

Some people would say that my friend’s ego got in the way of the deal. I’d have to agree, of course, but I think the agent was the one who was really at fault. He didn’t explain about the charges properly. If he had, my friend would have had a better perspective on them. In hostage negotiator’s terms, the agent closed okay, but then failed to explain the surrender. He should have told my friend about the charge, clearly. But he also should have told him how long the contracts would take to be prepared, which clearly irked my friend.

In a hostage situation, the first few minutes are usually the most dangerous for the hostages, since things are very volatile. There’s all sorts of energy flowing. Things have gone wrong already, and one little mistake can be magnified exponentially. Not that I would call any moment when you’re held at gunpoint a picnic, but things tend to calm down a bit after that first adrenaline rush. Then comes the next most dangerous time: the moment the bad guy comes out from behind the barricades to surrender.

Think about it: He’s got a gun, he’s nervous as hell, the ninjas have guns, and they’re nervous as hell too. They claim they’re not nervous, but they’re nervous. I was one, I know. One little screw-up, boom. In a hostage situation the surrender is always complicated because trust is never going to be at 100 percent—we’ve had to work hard just to get it to 51 percent, as we discussed earlier. The police have to be prepared for the worst-case scenario:

Yes, the bad guy has agreed to surrender peacefully.

Should we trust him?

Never.

Bad guys have been known to lie. A number of them over the years have agreed to surrender peacefully and at the very last minute started a shootout with the police. This is known as suicide by cop—the person actually wanted to die but did not have the balls to do it himself.

On the other side of the law, the hostage taker or barricaded individual has no reason to trust the police. Yes, the negotiator has made all kinds of promises that they will not be harmed. Every promise until now that was made had been kept. But that was in the past. Maybe it was a clever trick. Those people out there have guns, a lot of them.

That’s why AFTER we have a deal, after we’ve moved past the closing, hostage negotiators always go over the surrender very carefully. This is what you have to do, this is what’s going to happen, this is what the steps are. One, two, three. The hostage taker can even get a little annoyed at this point. “I know all this,” he may say. He wants to sign on the bottom line and get it over with.

I go over it very slowly, step-by-step. We don’t want any surprises.

In our business, one of the best tactics we use to handle the surrender is a simple one: We slow things down and go step-by-step. I have had ranking officers who hear that our subject wants to surrender and say, “Good, lets get him out of there right away.” Although I understand their rush to end the situation, I have at times had to assert myself by pointing out to them that this was the time to slow things down. This is the time to make sure all t’s are crossed and i’s are dotted. We outline everything with the hostage taker and make sure our own people are ready to rock.