A Team First

A lot of people are on the line when police departments deal with hostage situations. You can break this large team down into three basic groups:

• Negotiators.

• Technical people who set up communications and that sort of thing.

• Tactical people, which includes the snipers and others you see pouring out of SWAT vans on TV. That’s 9 Truck, in NYPD parlance.

The number of people in each group depends partly on the department and partly on the situation. Obviously, a big department will generally have more resources and therefore more people on the team. At NYPD, dozens and dozens of police officers can be involved, even in what we might consider a “routine” crisis. And in a big crisis—fuhgetaboutit.

In “real” life, the technical aspects of negotiations are usually taken care of. You want to talk to someone, you pick up the telephone. And even though you may think it’s the right thing to do, you can’t call in a SWAT team when your daughter asks if you’ll pay for her hotel room after the prom. So with a nod to the techies and the guys with the body armor, we’ll focus on the negotiating team.