Originally Published 2008

The negotiator stared across at the thirty seven year old man sitting on the front stoop of his house holding a gun in his lap and threatening to use it on himself or anyone who tried to approach him. They have been talking for just over two hours and the negotiator feels like he is not gaining any ground. The P.A. system he has been using was grating on the nerves of all involved so he elected to try to talking directly to the man by raising his voice so he could hear him from his position of cover on the far side of the patrol cruiser parked in the driveway of the middle class home. The result was that he was beginning to lose his voice and he is having difficulty hearing the man’s quiet and depressed words. His coach has noted that when he does speak, he only speaks in the past tense, never talking about future events.  The subject’s body language could only be described as beaten down, tired and dejected. He is leaning forward with his shoulders slouched and his head staring down at into the barrel of the gun.

From his vantage point, the negotiator can now see beads of sweat trickling down the man’s forehead and fall onto the upturned barrel and then continue down onto his thumb that is resting across the trigger of the black simi-automatic pistol. While the outside temperature is only 70 degrees, he also feels the trickle of sweat beads run from his own brow and his ballistic vest feels wet and clammy against his skin. He notices that he is suffering from a variety of stress related issues such as the tunnel vision and hyper-vigilance that is allowing him to focus on the path of the subjects sweat beads, difficulty thinking and focusing on what the subject is saying (cognitive dysfunction), as well as rapid respirations and time distortions.

He has negotiated with dozens of suicidal people in the past and each has been different but none have evoked this level of emotional response. This one is different because the subject is one of us; the person in crisis in this instance is another law enforcement officer, family.

If the statistics hold true, the officer with whom he is negotiating is most likely going to be a male, with ten to twelve years on the job. This officer is likely suffering some degree of depression and is self-medicating with alcohol or some other chemical substance. Additionally, the officer’s family may have recently drawn the line saying, “Enough is enough” and they are now separated from their family. Finally, this officer, who we issued the very ammunition and pistol he is pointing at himself along with training that we gave him on how to effectively use it, may be the subject of an administrative inquiry/investigation or disciplinary action at work possibly resulting in the termination of his employment as a law enforcement officer.

Most Crisis Negotiators have negotiated many times with a mentally ill person who has self-medicated with alcohol or other chemical substances or negotiated with people who have lost their jobs and/or their families (The Double Whammy) as a result. Negotiating with another officer may be one of the most difficult negotiations we may ever have to attempt as a crisis negotiator. While we may have certain advantages as we enter into the negotiation, those very advantages may also become liabilities as we continue the process. The fact that he is a law enforcement officer may allow the negotiator some advantages such as:

• Rapport is often already built; we hold a common bond as law enforcement officers.
• It is easier for us to empathize with what they may be going through.
• Background information is generally easier to obtain.

There are also some disadvantages we must consider such as:

• We represent an agency they may have trust issues with at the moment.
• They may know many of our skills and tactics.
• They may blame us for not “helping them before it came to this”.
• A larger presence of Command staff as well as pressure to resolve the situation quickly and without any additional attention from the media, public or other employees.
• Other officers may hold us accountable for the outcome.

What makes negotiating with a law enforcement officer most difficult may be the two things that makes us good at doing the job in the first place; our strong sense of self (Persona) and our ability to maintain control.

Law enforcement, by its very nature, is a sub-culture that is very particular about whom it admits. Several studies have suggested that it takes an average of eighteen to twenty-four months to become fully indoctrinated into that sub-culture. Sometime around four to five years of service, many officers begin to experience difficulty separating their personal and professional lives thus creating a conflict in their sense of self. While they may see themselves as a parent, spouse, coach, etc., they tend to see themselves as a law enforcement officer first and everything else second. This conflict creates a persona that being a law enforcement officer is who they are and if they lose that, they have lost their identity and control of their life. After approximately ten to twelve years, some officers may begin to experience a form of “burn-out” and begin to exhibit forms of depression and behavior shifts that can lead to a variety of personal identity crises.

From the first day in the police academy we were trained to maintain control of ourselves and the environment around us. Most law enforcement officers can be classified as control freaks and are not willing to relinquish that control to others. The feelings that he may be experiencing about the loss of his family, job, and sense of self, exacerbated by depression and chemical abuse lead to feelings of helplessness spiraling out of control with no hope of recovery. As has been identified on numerous occasions, a simple formula of helplessness plus hopelessness equals suicide.

Many of these personality and behavior changes may be attributed to untreated chronic stress, unresolved critical incident stress or chemical imbalances. Whatever the cause, most can be dealt with through peer support, stress debriefings or professional mental or medical health assistance. Unfortunately, in most cases, law enforcement officers are the last to seek or accept these services resulting in a statistic indicating that law enforcement officers are four to five times more likely to commit suicide than the general public.

Negotiating with a fellow officer will require your full attention and the utilization of all of your skills as a negotiator. A few things that you must remember are:

1. Protect yourself; Remember that anyone who is willing to kill them self, may also be willing to kill you. Maintain a safe location of cover, wear your body armor and maintain a safe distance. Most officers already have the tools necessary to accomplish this; we issued it to them and then taught them how to use it.
2. Check your ego at the door before you begin. Don’t be judgmental or minimize the importance of their behavior. This may be their last effort at reaching out for help and they deserve someone who cares enough to help them.
3. We hold a common bond with the person with which we are negotiating; they are part of our law enforcement family. While we should never be placed in a situation where we are negotiating with family, this will probably be the only negotiation you will ever do with a family member. Try and maintain perspective no matter what the outcome.
4. Although most of us will not admit it, many of us have had, or known someone who has had the same thoughts and feelings as the person with whom we are negotiating. Use those experiences to build a stronger bond and rapport with the person in crisis.
5. Don’t forget the basics; Active Listening Skills or Reflective Listening Skills are the foundation of all negotiations. Most law enforcement officers don’t express their emotions very well or very often. Anger is one of the emotions that most officers recognize as a “safe emotion” to exhibit. Since anger is a secondary emotion, it usually covers deeper feelings of sadness, frustration or even physical and emotional pain. You may have to assist them by attaching a label to the ones you can identify and allow them to explore them more than you would with a civilian with which you are negotiating.
6. Scenario training for negotiators in dealing with a fellow officer should be part of any Advanced Negotiation class and team commanders should implement this scenario into their teams training schedule as often as possible. While you will be negotiating with another officer, finding and preparing the role player for this scenario is imperative to a successful conclusion.

Many of the techniques necessary to effectively negotiate with a fellow officer require that we let down our emotional guard to develop a better understanding of the person in crisis as well as building empathy and rapport. As a result we may become subjected to personal feelings and emotions that require us to deal with them during and immediately, or shortly after the event. Peer support debriefings are appropriate for all personnel involved in these events and should be made available for them.

There are a number of good resources for additional information on suicide intervention, statistics and more specifically, police suicides. Some of those include The Centers for Disease Control, the National Strategy for Suicide Prevention Web Site, The Pain Behind the Badge.com, The International Critical Incident Stress Foundation and the Federal Bureau of Investigations Behavioral Science Unit.

Originally Published in 2010

Almost every trained crisis negotiator remembers the first time they were introduced to the “Hostage phone” or the “Throw phone” during basic negotiation training. That complicated contraption of buttons and wires connecting to all sorts of recorders, speakers and headphones neatly contained in a stainless steel brief case would allow you do everything from recording your negotiation to allowing your coach or anyone else on the scene to hear every word being said. Most importantly, you could call them on their home phone, plug into their home phone jack, or deliver a dedicated phone (throw phone) to them. The most intimidating component of the system was the negotiators headset. Not because of any menacing physical construction associated with it, but the thought that the person wearing it is responsible for the direction of the communication, the thoughts about liability discussed earlier in the class and the real fear that you have no real clue what to say to the person on the other end of the call. After “your time in the barrel”, everyone is eager to relinquish that responsibility to the next student for their indoctrination as the primary negotiator. That may truly be the first real appreciation that many negotiators feel for your coach as well as that disconcerted feeling the negotiator realizes throughout a real crisis intervention.

As technology has progressed at an exponential rate within the mobile telephone industry, the problems and dilemmas associated with negotiations have increased as quickly. More often than not, negotiators find that the person in crisis, the negotiator, or both, are relying on their mobile phone to accomplish the communication. With this in mind, the potential for certain problems to arise must be considered and addressed by the negotiator.

When the person in crisis is utilizing a mobile phone:

One of the first issues to be addressed is attempting to confirm the location of the person in crisis. One phenomena of any R/F transmission such as that used by mobile telephones, whether they are using an analog or digital signal, is that it can reflect off of the terrain or atmosphere for long distances where it may be received by a tower many miles from the original transmission location. This will give a false coordinate to the receiving tower and may divert a call for assistance to the wrong emergency communications center. Such was a case where a person in crisis called 911 to report that he was driving on a major interstate with his two small children in the vehicle and was threatening to kill himself and the children. Local officers in the area of the interstate were notified to be on the lookout for the caller. After notifying crisis negotiators, they were able to make contact with the caller and after some time, were able to determine that the caller was in fact, eighty miles away. Law enforcement officers in that jurisdiction were notified and were able to locate the caller and to safely resolve the situation.  On a smaller scale, locating a person in crisis inside a residence or business is made more difficult because of the mobility associated with the technology. Old school negotiators might have marked the phone line on the throw phone in 10 foot increments to get an estimate of how far the caller was inside the building. This helped SWAT members develop and, if necessary, execute a planed entry or delivery of a negotiated item. This lack of physical information makes it more difficult for other components of the crisis team.

Another problem that may occur is the inability to limit features on mobile phones that were either not present on traditional land-line phones or features that could be controlled or disabled by the service provider. Features such as call waiting and caller ID allow the person in crisis to put the negotiator on hold and take a call from a third party. In most cases, the third party may honestly be attempting to help the situation but the potential for harm is ever present with every uncontrolled communication with the person in crisis. As trust and empathy are earned and built between the negotiator and the person in crisis, learning who those third parties are may be accomplished through eliciting information about them from the person in crisis. Utilization of our effective listening skills may allow us to identify who the calling party is based on the changes of the person’s attitude and emotional state after talking with that person. While we are attempting to identify the third party, assuring the person in crisis that they have the choice of answering the phone or not when that person calls will provide them with a sense of control that they may be lacking as a result of the crisis. By assuring them that if they chose to answer the other caller, you will still be there when they get back as well as encouraging them to promise that they will talk to you afterwards works to build trust and reassures them that you do care about them and that you are there for them.

Once that person is identified, another negotiator or one of the team members assigned intelligence gathering can attempt to contact that person. During the communication with them, that negotiator should attempt to determine if it is possible to 1. Elicit their assistance and employ them as a true third party intermediary; 2. Encourage that person to cooperate with your efforts to resolve the situation by discontinuing their attempts to communicate with the person in crisis; or 3. Simply occupying them while the negotiation continues. Gaining the trust of those third parties who are wishing to help or even those who are knowingly or not, part of the problem, is as important as gaining the trust and rapport of the person in crisis. This often results in simultaneous negotiations being conducted by the same team.

A technique that has been tried and successfully completed is for one negotiator to call the person in crisis and then a second negotiator call the same number. Most phones will allow only two simultaneous calls thus keeping other callers from accessing the line. Remember, most of those with whom we are dealing are not dumb, but generally just the opposite and have an above average intelligence. They are simply in a state of crisis with which they are unable to cope. When you apply the two negotiators tying up the phone lines technique, you may run the risk of the person in crisis playing one negotiator against the other and creating a competitive state between the negotiators resulting in one or both negotiators loosing the trust and rapport earned to that point.

A relatively new technology that blocks or jams cell service availability in a designated area can help control the person in crisis’ ability to make or receive calls during periods that the negotiator is not on the phone with them. This technique is similar to the previously available ability of a service provider, technically savvy SWAT member or technical support personnel to disconnect land line phone service from a structure. This could create an opportunity to introduce a throw phone to the person in crisis. These “cellular signal disrupters” or “jammers” are presently being utilized in areas where heightened security measures are in place and even in gaming casinos to prevent cellular transmissions for obvious reasons. These “disrupters or jammers” are not target specific or directional in nature. They generally work in a fashion similar to a radio transmission tower by sending a signal in a 365 degree radius that disrupts the other R/F signals with in the area. This will have a direct affect on the responding officers through disruption of the police radio transmissions, mobile data card transmissions as well as the officer’s mobile phones thus virtually terminating the Crisis Teams ability to communicate with each other. The Federal Communications Commission regulates the use of mobile phone jammers and signal blockers for this very reason. Every agency considering the use of this technology needs to understand the legality and ramifications of using it before deploying such.

When the negotiator is using a mobile phone;

One of the first concerns for the negotiator is how to allow your coach to be privy to both sides of the conversation. For many years this has been a dilemma without great resolve. A large number of negotiations have been accomplished through a negotiator holding the phone away from their ear in an effort to allow the coach to hear the person in crisis as well as the negotiator. This technique is very tiring and frustrating for both parties and is difficult to accomplish. Fortunately, the technology to allow negotiators to connect their mobile phones to existing “Crisis phone” systems is now available. There are presently several systems designed to allow for the digital mobile phones as well as utilizing wireless and hard-wired Voice-over-Internet Protocol (V.O.I.P.) phones to operate in the same manner as traditional crisis phone configurations. Many of these systems are add-ons to an existing system and are available through the various system providers.

As mentioned above, the technology associated with mobile phones allows for not only the person in crisis, but the negotiator to receive incoming calls through their call-waiting feature. It is imperative that the negotiator not put the person in crisis on hold to answer another incoming call. Many phones will give a signal to the person on the phone that they have another call incoming at the time. If the person in crisis hears this and becomes alarmed, the negotiator can reassure them that they are the most important person right now and they are not going to be put on hold while another phone call is answered. That is also a good time to negotiate an agreement with them that neither party will answer other incoming calls during the negotiation process. This agreement alleviates the issue of third party intermediaries and builds a great deal of trust and esteem for the person in crisis.

As many negotiations are mobile in nature and the command area is hastily contrived in a parking lot or an adjacent street within close proximity to the crisis site, negotiators often find themselves and their support team utilizing a vehicle as their Negotiation Operations Center (NOC). A larger Sport Utility Vehicle with a “hands free” component works well for that situation. It allows each of the team members to hear what is being said by both parties, allows close proximity to the negotiator by the coach(s), and offers a simi-private location from which to work.

Another issue that must be considered involves an ill-advised decision by the negotiator to attempt contact with the person in crisis while the negotiator is in route to the scene. As learned in basic negotiation training, negotiation is a team sport. It should be conducted with certain information available, assistance of a qualified coach and the support of a team leader and possibly a tactical team. Calling the person in crisis and initiating a negotiation alone, while driving at a high rate of speed, through various traffic conditions, with your police radio blaring and your emergency equipment on, is not the optimum circumstance to begin the trust building and empathetic understanding processes necessary to accomplish the objective.

One additional issue that cannot be overlooked involves that of officer safety. Many negotiations are attempted from locations that are not in the best interest of the negotiator and may involve a serious officer safety violation. When faced with the possibility of using the traditional “hostage phone” configuration, negotiators immediately search for a location that allows for the equipment and support personnel with which they are accustomed. The mobility of a mobile phone can lend to most police officers “control freak” personalities and offer the opportunity to move to a location that is closer to the situation and from where the negotiator can personally see things as they occur or to see the person with whom they are negotiating. This opportunity leads to many safety issues as the negotiator may not maintain the same level of officer safety as they normally ensure in any other situation. In addition, this may place their coach or other support members in danger as well. Remember, if you do not have your number blocked, the person with whom you are negotiating now has your phone number and you may hear from them again. Agencies may want to consider maintaining a specific mobile phone for negotiation situations to alleviate this problem.

When both of you are mobile;

There have been several reports and studies over the years that indicate that most crisis situations are typically initiated in the late evening and last for approximately six to eight hours. As many people charge their mobile phones at night, there is a chance that the phone battery may not be fully charged when the negotiation begins. Additionally, operating the phone in an area with limited service or “roaming” on a network other than that of the primary service provider will drain the mobile phone battery at a higher rate than usual. Remember, batteries run out of power at the most inopportune times. The person in crisis may be inside their own residence so they may have access to recharge their phone batteries where the responding officers may not. Ensure that there is access to phone chargers that plug into a 110 outlet as well as those that work in the 12 volt accessory plug in a vehicle. Having a second battery that can be changed during the negotiation is not a bad idea either.

While the advent of digital signal transmission from mobile phones is now the industry standard, always remember that it is just a radio transmitter and all conversations can potentially be monitored by the media or others. Like every piece of equipment in the negotiators arsenal, negotiating via a mobile telephone is a skill that must be practiced in training scenarios to ensure a comfort level for all persons associated with the negotiation. The early identification of potential problems and issues can be addressed in this low stress, training environment and resolutions discussed to develop an appropriate operational protocol for those situations.

Any technology the negotiator can use to assist in dealing with a crisis situation is certainly an asset but the most important part of any negotiation will always be the skilled negotiator, coach and support team utilizing the technology. Keeping an open mind and remaining flexible throughout the negotiation will assist greatly in resolving these crises’ peacefully and safely for all involved.