It’s a typical evening on patrol until officers are dispatched to a call where a man said he is going to kill his wife and then himself. Dispatchers immediately begin mediating with the eerily calm man while they dispatch a small army to the call, including negotiators. Once on scene, hostage negotiators begin doing their job. It is almost like watching a waltz, methodical and arranged. Over the course of several hours, the suspect spoke with negotiators. He ultimately ended up killing his wife, but had a request of negotiators before he surrendered. He asked if he could have a beer before he came out. Officers granted his request and placed the beer in the middle of the street and illuminated it. The whole scene was similar to the initial lighting of the official Christmas tree in front of the Nation’s Capital. Being one of the officers on the perimeter of this scene gave me an appreciation of our department’s critical incident negotiators.

I spoke with several core members of the Sacramento Police Department’s Negotiations Team. Even though I spoke with each member individually, they all had the same basic sentiments about each other. The members of the core group with whom I spoke were Sergeants Tim Hunter, Doug Voska, Glen Faulkner, Detective Ben Gomez, and Officer Ben Louie. I was able to speak with them about some of their experiences.

“When you are working a hostage or crisis negotiation, you need to have patience and humility. You need to check your ego at the door,” Sergeant Tim Hunter said. Hunter is one of the senior hostage negotiators on the Sacramento Police Department. He has been a negotiator since 1992, teaches crisis negotiations throughout the state, and is a board member with the State Board of California Association of Hostage Negotiators (CAHN). He knows first hand how to handle desperate and distraught people.

Hunter told me about a 1996 case in which he was the lead negotiator. “The call originated from a house at Valley Hi Drive and Center Parkway. It was a domestic violence call where a man who couldn’t let go of his ex-girlfriend was getting hostile. Just before 7:00 p.m., the suspect forced the victim into a vehicle at gunpoint, and began driving. Officers got into a long pursuit with the suspect which ended up in the Bay Area. I had cell phone contact with him initially, but lost contact. The cell phone technology and range wasn’t what it is today. The pursuit ended up on a dead end street in San Mateo. He forced his girlfriend out of the vehicle and kicked in a door of a house, and took two more innocent hostages. The negotiations continued into the night. The suspect used the hostage’s telephone to communicate with San Mateo negotiators. My team learned that the hostage taker was suicidal and had extensive plans laid out indicating he was going to kill himself. Finally, at about 11:00 a.m. the next day, after letting his hostages go, he ended up shooting himself.”

Hunter relayed that it was very maddening for him and his negotiations team when they lost the initial cell phone contact. He said, “Everyone got frustrated. The hostage negotiation team got frustrated because we couldn’t communicate with the suspect, the cell phone company wouldn’t cooperate with us, and the suspect got mad and started shooting at passing cars because we couldn’t talk to him. Luckily, no one was hurt.”

Sacramento has had its fair share of high profile crisis negotiations situations. One specific case was the 1991 “Good Guys” incident where multiple gunmen took dozens of innocent victims hostage over the course of several hours. This incident was covered over the entire country. But on a day-to-day basis, most of the negotiations involve barricaded subject and suicide attempts. One such incident was in September of 2006 when a man was despondent about not being able to see his fiancé (who lived in Australia), and said that he wanted to end it all by jumping off the Howe Avenue Bridge into Highway 50 freeway traffic.

Hunter was immediately called to the scene to talk him down. Hunter spoke with the man for over three hours while holiday traffic stood still, backing up for miles. Not only did negotiators have to deal with him, but they also had to deal with impatient motorists yelling out to the man to, “Just jump and get it over with so we can move.”

From a logistical standpoint Sergeant Glen Faulkner explained that his job as a sergeant on the team is to constantly manage resources, while listening to the radio communications from dispatchers, and keeping constant contact with his negotiations team and his supervisors. He says, “I need to get my people on the ground as soon as possible and start setting up a location, gather intelligence, and ultimately establish contact to begin negotiating with the individual. Because I typically play the role of the resource manager, I don’t often get the opportunity to take the role of the primary negotiator. We have our experts. We have the Tim Hunters, the Doug Voskas, the Ben Louies and the Ben Gomezs for that.”

Faulkner was on the scene of the Howe Avenue Bridge incident. He spoke about some of the problems that negotiators had at that scene. “First of all, it was a holiday and the freeway was full of travelers. We had to close all lanes of the freeway for three hours because the desperate man was standing on an 18” wide metal band on the outside of the bridge, and he was walking back and forth over several lanes of the freeway. We diverted traffic over the bridge and allowed traffic to get back onto the freeway going the opposite direction. What compounded the problem is when every third car that got back onto the freeway was yelling for the man to ‘jump.’ Every time someone told him to jump, his attention went from us, onto the passing car. It was hard to maintain control in this situation. What’s most important to remember is that this is not a sprint, it is a marathon. It takes time.”

Detective Ben Gomez has been a negotiator since 1995. He was on the same case with Hunter involving the despondent boyfriend who kidnapped his girlfriend. He said, “That case was really unique. I assisted Hunter from the Communications Center. That case was uncommon because there were several agencies involved and we lost cell communication with the suspect while driving through the mountainous areas near Tracy. We learned a lot about the limiting factors of using cell phones after that one.”

Gomez relayed his thoughts about another case that was memorable for him. It was a suicidal subject who had been aggressive with his mother and was tearing up their house. Gomez said, “I was the first negotiator on scene and when I pulled up, I saw the suspect standing on the porch with a knife threatening to kill himself. He was very angry and agitated. There had been many attempts from both family and law enforcement to calm him down and drop the knife to no avail. I began talking to him and was ultimately able to convince him to drop the knife and surrender peacefully.”

Gomez attributes his successes to all the training and experience he received over the years. He said, “I’m glad that we as negotiators are a viable option for patrol in ensuring that everyone involved is able to go home safely. As a negotiator, it is rewarding to help someone in a crisis by trying to get them to realize that there are further options other than violence.”

Not all incidents are resolved in a peaceful manner. Gomez said, “One of the most frustrating parts of the job is learning that a critical incident resulted in a loss of a citizen’s life. You always question what else we could have said or done.”

The Sacramento Police Department’s crisis negotiations team is a small but elite team. The duty of negotiators is a secondary duty to these officers’ primary jobs. I spoke to Officer Ben Louie who has been on the negotiations team for 23 years. He commented on how cohesive his team is today as opposed to when he first started. He said, “We are a tight team. We may make fun of each other and give each other a hard time, but when it is time to perform, we put the kidding aside. We are dedicated to the same goal.” Louie is very intense when he is negotiating, and his team mates speak very highly of him. It is obvious he is an anchor on the team.

I asked Louie what he thought some of the positive and negative aspects to his job were. He said, “You are often a sound board. Sometimes you are on the phone for hours with someone who just wants to rant and rave before you can start negotiations. Most often, it could take two, five, ten hours. You know patrol is on the perimeter wondering what you are doing while they are out in the cold or heat, hungry and tired. The positive aspects are abundant, especially if you are successful and no one gets hurt. So far, we’ve done very well.”

Negotiators complete an extensive training and certification process, and it takes someone with a certain personality; someone who can remain calm and rational in the face of chaos.

As Sergeant Doug Voska explained, “We are a tight team, and we know we can count on each other. It is rewarding being a part of the team.” Voska has been a crisis negotiator since 1997. He spoke about an incident in which he was the Negotiation Commander. The situation was a domestic violence call involving a man who was threatening his wife with a gun. The wife had attempted to hide the gun, but he found it, which angered him even more. He then began shooting at his wife as she ran from the residence. “What was most memorable about this case is that the man was 69 years old and his wife was 68. We had been speaking over the telephone for quite some time, but the subject seemed to be sabotaging our primary negotiator’s attempts to build any rapport with him. They mutually decided to hang up for a few minutes. While we were discussing our strategy, the subject he went out the front door and brandished a shotgun at SWAT officers. It was suicide by cop. You always second guess situations like that. Could we have said something more? Could we have said something better? The stakes are often high in our job. However, we are successful a whole lot more than we are unsuccessful. It’s rewarding when we can resolve critical incidents without the loss of a life and give suicidal people what they need to at least buy them another day.”

In speaking with all these sergeants, detectives and officers, I realized that their combined experience in negotiations is nearly 64 years. They are invaluable to the Sacramento Police Department, and their gift of the ability to persuade the most distressed person to surrender peacefully while staying composed are qualities they were born with.