Emotions & Negotiation

“The worst time to craft a strategy to deal with strong negative emotions is while you are experiencing them.”

From Beyond Reason: Using Your Emotions As You Negotiate - I highly recommend this book. 

Find it at Amazon.com [HERE].

Body Cam Footage Captures Officer Rescuing Suicidal Man (video)

Police in Hamden, Connecticut, have released body camera footage showing an officer's dramatic rescue of a elderly man who attempted to kill himself by jumping off a sixth-floor balcony.

Principles of Crisis Negotiation

Principles of crisis negotiation- by Scott Tillema

As police crisis negotiators, we come from a wide variety of backgrounds, agencies big and small, urban and rural. We have received training from a wide variety of different sources, teaching us various techniques of communication and influence. Yet, we do common work and and have a common goal, to use verbal influence to peacefully resolve a critical incident. Whether it be a hostage situation or a single individual in crisis, if we expect to find success in our negotiations, there are a few principles that are consistent and fundamental.

1.      Seek first to understand.

We cannot solve a problem if we don't understand what it is. It is much more efficient for us to start off a negotiation by telling someone to put the gun down or come off the ledge, but how can we realistically expect to change a person's behavior without knowing and appreciating their mindset?

Qatar royals among the 26 hostages freed in bargain

(Fox News)- AGHDAD – Qatar has secured the release of 26 hostages after nearly a year and a half in captivity, including members of its ruling family, in what became possibly the region's most complex and sensitive hostage negotiation deal in recent years.

Several people with knowledge of the talks and a person involved in the negotiations said the hostage deal was linked to one of the largest population transfers in Syria's six-year-long civil war...

The complexity of the talks highlights Qatar's role as an experienced and shrewd facilitator in hostage negotiations -- this time involving members of the Gulf Arab state's ruling family.

It also raised allegations that the tiny energy rich nation paid millions of dollars to an al-Qaida-linked group...

Read more [HERE].

Court: Serious failings in Russian response to Beslan hostage crisis

(CNN)The European Court of Human Rights ruled Thursday that there had been "serious failings" in the Russian authorities' handling of a 2004 terrorist attack on a school in Beslan, North Ossetia, where more than 330 people were killed.

The case was brought by 409 relatives of those killed or injured and survivors of the attack, in which more than 1,000 people were held hostage for more than two days in a school gymnasium rigged with explosives by heavily armed Chechen separatists.

More than 180 children were among those killed by the end of the siege, which began as the school held a ceremony to mark the start of a new school year.

Read more [HERE].

• Read an in-depth review, specifically from the hostage negotiation perspective, by Adam Dolnik [HERE]. 
• Here's my 'Lessons Learned' on the incident [HERE]. 

Shootout: Somali Pirates Attempt To Hijack A Boat

(Via NY Daily News)-A cargo ship said ahoy to Somali pirates with a hail of gunfire.

Video posted Thursday shows a private security crew fighting off two skiffs of high-seas bandits.

By Saturday it had gone viral with more than 6 million views of the recording, which resembles something out of a “Call of Duty” video game.

More [HERE].

At What Cost? The Burden of Wearing the Badge

The inaugural Police Mental Health Symposium will provide a forum for policing agencies to discuss the challenges and global best practice in mental health policy. Experts and policing leaders will convene in Washington, DC on June 2. The symposium is open to local, state and federal policing agencies, as well as partner agencies in relevant fields, and will be hosted by the Australian Federal Police.

See the flyer [HERE]. 

STR Annual Conference on Terrorism - NYC August 2017

Get more information [HERE].

Seattle PD negotiators take to the web to explain tactics in Tuesday's crisis call

SEATTLE - As the man paced up and down Third Avenue, armed with a knife, Seattle police Detective Beth Wareing tried to have a conversation with him by yelling across the street.

Wareing, a member of the department’s hostage negotiations team, said she didn’t think about the honking, the perturbed commuters or how the incident was disrupting the Tuesday evening commute. Her sole focus was getting the distraught man to drop the knife and listen.

“Basically, it was reaching out to him and reminding him he had things to live for and he had people who cared about him,” Wareing said Thursday.

...Waltz and Wareing used the Reddit forum to explain that negotiations are about “building a connection” with people in crisis and that there’s no “magical word or phrase that causes people to give up.”

Read more at Komo News [HERE]. 

2 days after SPD shuts down 3rd Ave to negotiate w/ man in crisis, negotiators taking to Reddit to explain tactics. https://t.co/yHsR4lr52i

— Jennifer Sullivan (@SeattleSullivan) March 30, 2017

Hostage negotation phone calls from Jacksonville hostage situation

A man held 13 people hostage at the Community First Credit Union in December of 2016 and the negotator phone calls have been released exclusively to First Coast News.

...For the first time were hearing the audio recording between a hostage negotiator and a Jacksonville man threatening to kill 13 people at a credit union in northwest Jacksonville.  

Suspect: My family are the only people who could save these people. Do you understand that? Do you understand that?

Negotiator: No, you’re the one who can save these people”

Read more from First Coast News and watch the video [HERE]. 

Somali man accused of kidnapping Australian lured to Canada in elaborate sting

Canadian journalist Amanda Lindhout and Australian photographer Nigel Brennan during their kidnap ordeal.

AMAZING details have emerged of an elaborate trap set by police to catch one of the alleged kidnappers who held Queensland photographer Nigel Brennan hostage in Somalia for 15 months.

A court has heard a Royal Canadian Mounted Police officer spent five years convincing Ali Omar Ader that he was a book agent to lure him halfway around the world and arrest him.

Police claim Ader, 42, was “one of the main negotiators’’ for militants who took Mr Brennan, from Bundaberg, and Canadian journalist Amanda Lindhout captive in August 2008.

Read more from the HeraldSun.com.au [HERE].