Chapter 4: Contain, Negotiate, Close

There are three phases to every negotiation. Finish one before you go on to the next.

Hostage situations can be broken down into three phases. Phase one is containment—the first goal of the police forces responding to a crisis is to contain the situation. If bank robbers have taken over a building, at a minimum you want to keep them in that building. If they have ten hostages, you don’t want to give them eleven. If they have three guns with a dozen clips of ammunition, you’re not going to send in a fresh case of shells.

The time up until containment—and until the subjects realize and accept that they’re contained—is probably the most volatile. The bad guys have guns or knives or bombs or whatever, they’re pumping gallons of adrenaline through their veins, and by definition they’re not thinking straight. I don’t know anyone who keeps precise statistics on this sort of thing, but it’s common knowledge in the law enforcement community that the most dangerous time of a hostage situation is during the initial takeover. That’s when weapons are most likely to be used.

The uncertainty about what is going to happen during this time puts everyone at danger. My goal during this stage is to put everyone at ease. When I say everyone, I mean everyone, starting with the hostage taker, hostages, negotiators, SWAT personnel, and our commanders. Everyone is experiencing an adrenaline rush. The hostage taker is trapped and feeling a fight or flight decision. The hostages may be trying to figure out if they should fight or try to escape. The SWAT team members have raced to the scene at 100 mph. The commanders are faced with the enormous responsibility for the lives at stake.

Just the simple tactic of getting the hostage taker to talk and allow a little time to pass has the effect of calming everyone down. We’re not really negotiating in this stage—we’re calming down and getting ready to negotiate.

Phase two involves the negotiation itself. The negotiating team makes contact and begins to work with the subjects. The negotiator will work to establish a rapport on a very simple level, asking for a name, treating the subject with respect. This stage does not begin until the situation is contained. There’s a practical reason for that—the subject really has no reason to negotiate, or even talk to you, until it’s clear that his options are limited. Containment leads to negotiation: I’d say in most crisis situations, the fact that a tactical squad has responded to the scene and cut off the possibilities of easy escape makes the subject want to negotiate. He’s looking for a way out. That doesn’t necessarily make him cooperative: Hey, the guy’s got a gun, remember? But it does give him an incentive to start negotiating.

Hostage negotiators know that they have a great advantage. Something like 98 percent of all the hostage takers and barricaded people you deal with want to live. That tells the negotiator right from the start that a deal can be worked out; all he has to do is come up with one that everyone can live with, literally. But this is true in most everyday negotiations as well. The car salesman and the real estate agent want to make a sale. The company shopping for a new retirement management program wants the service. All you have to do is find a deal everyone can live with.

The last phase of the situation comes in the surrender—closing the deal the negotiator has worked out. This is also a very dangerous time. We’ve all heard of buyer’s regret; imagine how it plays out when the buyer has a gun. Hostage negotiators will strive to have no surprises at the closing, and part of the negotiations will involve working out exactly how the people surrendering should move and behave.