Chapter 7: Is He A Psycho, Or Just A Maniac?

Knowing what kind of crazy you’re dealing with can help you tailor your negotiating approach.

Can you tell me exactly what being crazy means?

I’ve been in this business for a long time but I still can’t answer that question. I know there are medical terms and conditions and definitions, but “crazy” is one of those things that’s just, well, crazy to define.

On one particular cold night the negotiation team I was working was called to deal with a man threatening suicide in an apartment in Brooklyn. The ninjas had the man cornered in a bedroom. The man weighed about 400 pounds and was armed with a twelve-inch butcher knife. He threatened to kill anyone who came into the room. He also yelled about people out to kill him and how he trusted no one and he was going to take his own life before someone else did. Because of the way the apartment was laid out and the fact that there was no phone in the room where he was, I had to do the type of negotiation I dread the most: face-to-face.

Or rather, face-to-very-big-knife.

If it were not for the eight ninjas around me and the Kevlar vest and helmet I wore, I’m not entirely sure I would have gone in. I know for a fact I would have rather been out fishing. And for the record, I should say that hostage negotiators are actually trained and instructed and drilled on not getting in exactly that sort of situation.

But anyway, I was trying to calm the subject down and getting nowhere. He kept yelling over me, and my words were lost in all the noise. I decided to do something that was different for me at the time, since I was still fairly new to the field: I just shut up and listened.

The man’s yelling went on for what seemed like hours—and I know he did a thirty-minute stretch without stopping to take a breath. As I listened I started to hear what was going on inside his distraught mind. He was in pain. Not physical pain, but deep emotional pain. He was scared and felt alone. It seems easy now to point this out, as if of course that’s what was going on, but I really didn’t understand it when I walked into the room. It was a big knife, after all, and a very loud rant.

As soon as he stopped his ranting, I took the opportunity to get my word in: “I can hear from what you are saying that you are in pain. You are hurting and feel alone.”

Bring on my Ph.D. He looked at me as if he was trying to figure out exactly who I was and was I for real. I continued to talk with a soothing calm voice, and we could all see this very big dangerous man start to deflate like someone had just let the air out of him. I assured him that I would tell the doctors about his pain. A calm came over him like a security blanket, and he dropped the knife and walked into the arms of the ninjas.

I knew this time that it was dangerous, because our big teddy bear could turn into a very big dangerous problem. Was he crazy? Was he a maniac?

Tell you the truth, I have no idea. The one thing I do know is that he needed help and I was lucky enough to stumble on the right words.