Critical Tactics Employed in Hostage Negotiation

Raanan Liebermann holds a Ph.D. from the University of Oxford and is the president of Signtel, Inc., an organization focused on researching and developing innovative products that use artificial intelligence to assist people who suffer from hearing and sight impairment. Raanan Liebermann was also recognized in the city of New Haven for establishing the New Haven Police Stress Unit and the New Haven Hostage Negotiation team, under the collaborative support of then Chief Edward Morrone and Chief William Farrell. Dr. Raanan Liebermann who trained the officers teams members ran the New Haven Police Stress Unit and the New Haven Hostage Negotiation Team for a decade as a contribution to his community.

Effective hostage negation is useful during dangerous and tense standoffs and requires the use of specific techniques to encourage a hostage-taker to negotiate and agree to a solution that results in the least amount of damage possible. To negotiate successfully, the perspective of the suspect must try to be understood along with his weaknesses and strengths.

During hostage negotiations, the hostage-taker must be listened to and not interrupted or disagreed with as he speaks, though what he says can be acknowledged. He should be encouraged to talk by asking him open-ended questions, not by arguing with him or provoking him. While speaking to the hostage-taker, the negotiator should pause to influence his behavior. Pausing is intended to have the beneficial effects of encouraging the hostage-taker to continue conversing about the situation and to help diffuse an emotional situation. Being empathetic to the hostage-taker also helps to calm him, as does mirroring what he says by paraphrasing his words back to him to causes him to think about what he has said.

Such techniques proved themselves many times, such as in the case where the hostage-taker who was a paranoid- schizophrenic, and took hostage all members of his support group session at the Connecticut Mental Health Center in New Haven, CT, which was resolved when the hostage-taker, though being a paranoid, gave his gun to one of the hostages and walked out of the room to the awaiting swat team, without any incidence.