As Douglas County, Ore., Sheriff’s Deputy Chris Taylor spoke on the phone with a man posing as someone who had taken his family hostage, he continuously tried to connect with him. But it took time.
“Why should I tell you?” the man said.
That question was at the heart of the simulation, part of a five-day basic crisis and hostage negotiator training that involved about a dozen law enforcement agencies throughout the region. Held at Compass Church at 1812 Main St. in Vancouver, the trainings allow teams of law enforcement personnel to practice their negotiating skills.
At the core of such negotiations is replacing fear in the person in crisis with hope, said retired Portland Police Bureau Sgt. Troy King.
“At the end of the day, that guy is going to jail,” King said. “But we need to find out how to do it in a way that creates dignity and keeps people safe.”
Multiple crisis negotiation teams worked in different rooms throughout the church on Thursday. The groups featured a team leader; a primary negotiator, who spoke with the hostage taker; a secondary negotiator, who aided the primary and took over if the conversations took bad turns; intelligence officers, who researched information that would help the negotiators; and scribes, who took detailed notes of the negotiations and documented items found during research.
All of the role players sat in one room and interacted with the same person, named Mike Davis, who had taken his family hostage.
While officers are typically trained to take control of a scene as soon as possible, the training often counters that instinct, King said. The teams are typically called when the first officers at a scene can’t reach a subject who is barricaded, holding hostages or threatening suicide.
“The learning point for them is to realize that they’re not in control. The subject is in control,” King said. “But these teams are activated when those attempts have failed.”
Hooks and triggers
Two of the things the scribes worked to document were hooks, topics that would most likely lead the person to trust police, and triggers, which became taboo subjects.
The fictional Davis was a corrections deputy who was holding his wife, Cindy, and children, including a young son named Patrick, hostage in his home with a gun. The man’s hooks included his family, while his triggers included issues at work and a recent situation in which he “screwed up.”
“It sounds to me like you really want to talk about what’s going on there,” Taylor told the role player over the phone. “You’re holding back on me.”
“You’re holding out on me,” the role player said. “Why are you even here?”
“We’re not there on the ground,” Taylor said. “I’m here for you.”
“At the end of the day, there’s no point to anything,” the man said.
“Sure there is, Mike,” Taylor said. “You still have a relationship with Patrick, who needs to grow up, and you still have a relationship with your wife, Cindy.”
Negotiators often use similar dialogue to encourage subjects to confront strong emotions in a safe manner, Vancouver police Officer Brian Schaffer said.
“A lot of people don’t know how they feel,” Schaffer said. “So if you let them know that, you can build a rapport with them.”
Negotiators knew the fictional Davis was involved in a car crash the night before. They did not know all of the details, however, including that he was intoxicated and killed a young girl.
Portland police Officers David Hughes and Jackson Oldham both portrayed Davis for different teams. When both had temporarily hung up the phone at one point, they compared notes. Oldham told Hughes that he disconnected the phone after the negotiators asked repeatedly about the crash.
“We’re trying to not just reward them unless they’ve earned it,” Hughes said.
As the team compared notes, they realized police presence could be advantageous, even though it had been identified as a trigger. The man kept asking police to leave but had mentioned he would be willing to allow his family to exit the home.
“He wants us to leave, so maybe we tap into that by just focusing on getting Cindy and the kids out of there,” Clark County Corrections Deputy Paul Bond, an intelligence officer, told negotiators.
The numerous calls and hang-ups between the officers and the role players highlighted the length of time crisis negotiations can take.
“It’s going to take time, because the emotions are so high that you have to bring that down,” Schaffer said.
Clark County’s crisis negotiation team includes a handful of officers from the Vancouver Police Department and Clark County Sheriff’s Office. Along with the officers, who volunteer for the role and are on call at all hours every day, are two mental health professionals, Schaffer said.
“What the public may not see is that there’s an entire team of paid professionals behind the scenes trying to prevent use of force at all,” King said.
