Tactical Empathy

A victim is a homicide-to-be.

The bad guy on the inside is on a killing journey,

and he's got a very specific destination in mind.

He's probably there to get himself killed.

When you get into hostage negotiation,

you wanna save everybody.

I'm there to save lives.

Hostage negotiators saving lives when the sun comes up.

But if somebody's there with suicide by cop,

and he's got multiple hostages,

if you don't recognize the dynamic, and he says,

"Kill me or I kill them."

Let them go free.

Then he's gonna start killing them

until you get the idea.

Were arraigned in court

on charges stemming from the siege.

Okay, westbound, westbound,

I'm sorry, eastbound, eastbound 42, I think.

Anybody that wants to get into kidnapping

and murdering to make a point,

finds out very quickly how lucrative it is.

Abu Sayyaf are notorious

for demanding huge ransoms,

then murdering those who don't pay.

And then they become addicted

to the amount of money that they can make.

It's money that they were asking. It's ridiculous.

Even if they started out as some sort of

fundamental, as a zealot,

you start throwing money at fundamental, as a zealots,

gonna become mercenaries real fast.

- Every week there is news of more violence in Columbia.

We have directed our armed forces

to take the appropriate action.

- Military police were patrolling the streets

looking for bombers.

As a hostage negotiator,

empathy is what's gonna be applied

to communicate effectively with these people.

- All day long we've been in touch with another individual

who the hostage negotiators were talking,

we're trying to reestablish the dialogue with them.

It becomes a literally an unlimited ability

to influence people.

- People feel like their autonomy is being infringed upon.

They're getting commanded to do things

that they don't want to do.

Not complying now, uh-oh, oh no.

We can avoid a lot of the conflict

that leads to violence.

It's astonishing how quickly problems fall away

when you use empathy.

Was I born to be a hostage negotiator? I don't know.

You know, I grew up in a small town in Iowa, you know,

Midwestern environment, very can do, blue collar,

figure it out environment.

Like if you needed something done,

my father might hand you the tools to do it,

but then say, go figure it out.

Which is very Midwestern, very Iowa, if you will.

And that ends up being the attitude of a hostage negotiator

or a communicator or a consultant.

Figure it out.

Take the information that's in front of you,

you got a task, figure it out.

Everybody in the Midwest,

whenever they told me about Kansas City, they all loved it.

They raved about what a great town it was across the board.

I went to work

for the Kansas City, Missouri Police Department.

I went down there and it turned out to be a wonderful town,

a wonderful experience,

extremely well-run police department.

But at the same time, you know, I went down

and got a job that only required at the time

a high school diploma.

And my father had just got done paying for a college degree.

You know, he funded my degree.

And I look back on that and I think, you know,

if I sent my son to college,

and he'd turn around

and got a job where he didn't need a college degree,

I'd probably ask for my money back.

Hey, what's your name?

Brandon Voss.

How old are you?

I'm two years old.

All right, who's that standing there.

So my father, he wanted to encourage me.

So he had a friend

that was with the Secret Service at the time,

introduced me to the guy,

and we started to talk about his experience

in federal law enforcement.

And he said to me, you know, Secret Service,

I've traveled all over the world.

And I remember thinking like, really?

Somebody paid for you to travel all over the world?

At that time, like I grew up in Iowa.

I'd seen Canada from a distance.

That was the extent of my international travel.

Two, one.

Come in hot.

Get them out of here.

Step away from the wall,

keep it right back here, turn to your right.

Okay sir, kneel down.

As fate would have it,

when I went to apply for the Secret Service,

they were not hiring, and the bureau was.

I went in and applied for the FBI.

They wanted you to have a minimum

of three years of work experience, post four year degree.

I was just coming up on the three years,

and they were hiring a lot of people,

and I snuck in the door with the crowd.

I was lucky enough to catch on to the surveillance team

for the joint terrorist task force in New York City

right off the bat.

And it was a really, really dangerous time in New York,

mid '80s, there wasn't a safe street corner in the city,

which is if you're a FBI agent

on a joint terrorist task force on a street all the time,

this is great.

You know, this is what you're getting paid to do.

You're up to your eyeballs in this all the time.

At that time you had to be prepared to be

in any neighborhood in New York City

by yourself at any time with no communication with anybody.

I mean, be able to survive by yourself

in the toughest neighborhood in town.

And you got really street savvy.

And you know, the sort of, the interesting thing

is the bad guys are real good at spotting cops right away.

Not in 10 million years are they gonna figure

you're all by yourself.

So knowing that,

as long as you don't rile them up unnecessarily,

they're gonna steer clear of you.

So I got really used

to going into really tough parts of town by myself.

As long as you don't look scared

or if somebody advances on you, you can't run,

you gotta meet them in the eye and just let them know

that they're gonna have their hands full with you,

and they figure out you're either crazy or you're a cop.

But either one, you're a little more to bite off

than they really want to chew at that point in time.

They're probably gonna take a pass on you.

All right, now gimme the pedigree.

All right, give a good,

we'll give a good toss and a half.

All right, yeah.

All right, well we are right across the street

from 26 Federal Plaza,

which is where the FBI office was housed

when I got assigned to New York,

and where I was as part of the joint terrorist task force,

when I wanted to become a hostage negotiator,

and the head of the crisis negotiation team

told me to go volunteer on a suicide hotline.

Simply put, negotiation is present

anytime the words I want or I need

are in the head of the counterpart or in your own head,

you are in fact negotiating.

There is a level of influence that needs to be accomplished.

And of course collaboration is paramount for that.

- We had hostage negotiators, I didn't know what they did,

you know, they were part of crisis response.

And I figured, how hard could it be.

You know then I just went

to the head of the hostage negotiation team,

FBI New York, Amy Bonderow.

I remember walking up to her one day,

she's sitting at her desk, and I kind of go like, ta-da,

I wanna be on the hostage negotiation team.

She kind of, she kind of looked up at me over her glasses

and she's like, yeah, I know who you are.

She said everybody wants to be a hostage negotiator.

It sounds sexy and cool.

They wanna get the shirt, they want to do it.

Everybody wants to do it.

You got no credentials, no qualifications,

go away, it's a long line.

And what you do is on the outside braces of the dormers.

So you know, I'm from a figure it out,

Midwestern work ethic.

Find out what you gotta do.

Ask the person who knows what you should do.

Listen to them when they tell you and then go out and do it.

And she said, go and volunteer on a suicide hotline.

When you first get there they say, all right,

so there's a 20 minute time limit on every call,

and you know, you react, you say 20 minutes.

Like in the movies, they're on the phone