Hostage Negotiator Selection

Before I was a writer, I was a police officer. And, for many of the twenty-five years that I served in the Met, I worked as a Hostage Negotiator - or, to give the role its full and proper title, a Hostage & Crisis Negotiator. The fact is that full-blown Hollywood hostage scenarios - the bank robbery gone wrong or the desperate fugitive holed up in a block of flats - are a comparative rarity. Most of the calls that a police negotiator takes are to people in crisis: beautiful, broken souls who have reached the end of themselves and are in desperate need of a helping hand.

Before I could be deployed as a Negotiator in the real world, I had to go through a rigorous selection process. After a written application and an interview, in the late spring of 2005, I travelled to Hendon - the Met’s world-famous training college - for the final element: the practical assessment.

After a short briefing, I was directed towards a closed door at one end of a deserted, strip-lit corridor. I was told that, somewhere behind the door, there was a man acting the part of an officer who hadn’t shown up for work that day. No one knew the reasons why, but his team were worried about him. I was given his name and told that this was his home address. 

I decided that the best approach was to treat the scenario as though it was entirely real. So I took a deep breath and walked down the corridor. Then, standing to one side of the door, I called out his name. I didn’t speak too loudly - I didn’t want to startle him.

At first, there was no response.

I paused for a moment, before calling his name again, a little louder this time. I introduced myself and explained that I was concerned about him and wanted to know if there was anything I could do to help.

There was a sound of shuffling feet on the other side of the door.

“Who is it?”

His voice was soft and sad. I repeated my introduction and asked the man if he would be willing to open the door and talk to me. No, he said, he would prefer to keep things just as they were. 

And I was left with no alternative but to begin trying to communicate with a man I could not see, whose face and life I did not know. I realised later on - once the assessment was over - that the door was never going to open. Because that wasn’t the point of the exercise. 

You might be forgiven for thinking that police negotiators are selected on the basis of a talent for talking, or perhaps for an ability to solve seemingly intractable problems. But that isn’t it. That really isn’t it at all. Talking is important - of course - but what the people running the selection process wanted to know is whether I knew how to listen. 

To words that are spoken and those that are not. To subtle notes and changes in tone: hints of hope or weariness, of resolve or remorse, of determination or resignation. To the sounds that are beyond words: gut-deep groans and whispered sighs; sharply drawn breaths and puff-cheeked despair; wry laughter and held-back tears. And to the poignant, laden silences that fall between words.

Standing alone in the Hendon corridor, I started to listen - and there, in the man’s words and in among his words, were all the clues I needed to unlock his story. 

I managed to pass the assessment and, after an intense two-week training course, I took my place on the call-out rota. In the years that followed, I was deployed on countless occasions, often to the middle of nowhere, frequently in the middle of the night. Sometimes to crime scenes, more usually to the places where the people in pain were calling for help. 

And in those places, I learned - time and again - that listening saves lives.