Stalling for Time by Gary Noesner Read Free Book Online Page B

unique ability to draw out stories from the agents and police officers he trained and use this information to build a base of knowledge.
    Fred taught us that the key to successful negotiation was to discern the subject’s motivation, goals, and emotional needs and to make use of that knowledge strategically. Once we understood the hostage taker’s real purpose, we had a better chance of convincing him that killing the hostages would not serve that purpose and would only make an already bad situation worse.
    One of our most effective tools for negotiation is to offer the hostage taker something he wants in exchange for something we want—ideally, the release of at least one hostage. (In the Charlie Leaf situation, as I’ve said, this didn’t work—he didn’t want anything from us—so we had to try a different strategy.) Often we’ll say something like, “Why don’t you help me help you? Give me something to work with, and let’s see what we can accomplish working together.” If the subject resists making a trade, the negotiator might say, “I’d like to help you, but my boss just won’t let me send in what you want until you send someone out in return.” By making the subject work hard for everything gained, we wear down his resolve. He realizes he doesn’t have as much power or control over the situation as he thought he had.
    We can not-so-subtly reinforce that realization by showing a visible tactical force capability. This can also be a leverage point in moving negotiations along. For instance, we’ll suggest to the hostage taker that we won’t kill him as long as he behaves reasonably.
    Dr. Mike Webster, a Canadian psychologist who has worked with the Royal Canadian Mounted Police and FBI negotiation programs, describes this as the “parallel approach” to crisis resolution, in which we contrast the benefits of cooperation with the risks of resistance. Authorities negotiate in good faith, while simultaneously preparing for and showing their ability to undertake tactical action. Limited demonstration of tactical capability can help the negotiation process along byencouraging dialogue. Too little action can make the subject feel confident and secure, thus less likely to negotiate in earnest. Too much action might trigger a firefight, which is what Webster calls the “paradox of power”—the harder we push the more likely we are to be met with resistance. Law enforcement officials who have become angry and agitated owing to a lack of progress are more inclined to use force in a non-incremental way.
    Most hostage takers do not begin their day planning to kill someone and then die in a hail of bullets. They are usually focused on getting their demands met. In a small number of cases, a suicidal individual purposefully holds hostages and seeks a confrontation with the clear intention of dying at the hands of the police. These rare cases are classified as “suicides by cop.” But most hostage takers want to live; even many who seem bent on self-destruction are, at most, ambivalent. That ambivalence serves as the access point to insert the wedge of negotiation.
    The duration of most such incidents is usually only a few hours or less, with surrender achieved well over 90 percent of the time when a proper negotiation approach is used. Very few activities in law enforcement yield success rates that high.
    Even so, it can be a complex and timely process to move the hostage taker to a point where he realizes he won’t achieve his goals, and that’s why we think about much of our work as stalling for time. After a few hours, days, or even weeks, things may not look as bad as they did at first, both for the hostage taker and for the authorities. Alternatives to violence begin to emerge, and our goal is to move the hostage taker away from the tunnel vision that prevents him from seeing those alternatives.
    One example from these early days came during a domestic hijacking when a young man brandished a weapon