by KIM HILSENEBCK
More than 200 law enforcement personnel from around the country converged on the Texas State University campus last week for the three-day Hostage Negotiation Training and Competition.
The event, now in its 23rd year, was the brainchild of Wayman Mullins, professor of criminal justice at the university and an expert in hostage and crisis negotiations and terrorism.
For the past 16 years, he has been a reserve deputy and member of the regional Hostage Negotiation Team comprised of officers from the Hays County Sheriff’s Office, San Marcos Police Department and Kyle Police Department. He provides mental health services as well.
Mullins co-authored the book, “Crisis Negotiations-Managing Critical Incidents and Hostage Situations in Law Enforcement and Corrections,” with Michael McMains. That book, entering its fifth edition, is considered what many would call the “bible” of hostage situations.
Phil Jackson, a former student of Mullins, is one of those many. Jackson, a mental health officer with the San Marcos Police Department, is also on the regional task force for crisis negotiation with Mullins.
“Mullins is the best,” Jackson said.
Those academic lessons served Jackson well recently when he had to negotiate with 19-year-old Caleb Crow in Wimberley. Crow is accused of hitting his mother on the head with a dumbbell, stealing a gun, killing a dog and shooting a man in the abdomen.
Jackson helped negotiate Crow exiting his mother’s home where he holed up after allegedly shooting a neighbor.
But hostage negotiation can be a tricky business. The state of mind of the person or persons holding hostages can range from calm and collected to raging anger.
Since these situations don’t occur every day, law enforcement officers need to practice their craft. They need training to handle a hostage crisis, which is one reason for the competition.
Twenty teams from law enforcement agencies across the state and the nation competed in the challenge last week.
Lt. Jeri Skrocki from the Hays County Sheriff’s Office is also on the regional hostage negotiation task force. She said her team, for which she has nothing but praise, has been in the competition the past 13 years.
This year, her role was that of the team commander.
“It’s a great opportunity to utilize our skills and work through a problem,” Skrocki said. “We have to deal with whatever they throw at us.”
She said a few years ago, the scenario started and continued for quite a while via instant messaging and texting with the person holding the hostages.
“Technology hit us full force; everything was on computer,” she said. “The situation brought technology to the forefront and we had to learn how to deal with it, including understanding all those acronyms.”
She laughed.
Skrocki said it was a whole new area of training for her team.
Overall, she said the competition provides the team with an chance to refine their already strong skills. Most members of the team have at least 10 years of experience as an officer and many have also been on the team for as many years.
Skrocki shared a real-life incident from a few years back to illustrate the importance of teamwork and active listening as well as digging up golden nuggets of information that can turn the tide of the situation.
“We had a call to do a welfare check on a suicidal man,” she said. “Our team had to find the hook to bring him out.”
During the incident, team members who aren’t in the negotiation are actively conducted intelligence gathering, which often includes calling family members to gain insight.
“What do we have?” she asked her team.
Someone had talked to the man’s daughter who was a thousand miles away and learned of a nickname he had for her as child that even her mother didn’t know about, Skrocki said.
“When we shared with him what she told us – that she loved him and didn’t want him to do this and that she remembered her pet name, he broke down and sobbed,” she said. “About 20 minutes later, he came out.”
She relayed that story to show that no job is unimportant.
Skrocki also said her team, which came in third place this year, was utterly exhausted at the end of the day.
“You just spend hours thinking and thinking,” she said.
Mullins writes the script for the competition, which is different every year. Volunteer actors create the characters in the scenarios.
This year’s situation involved a group of earth activists who stormed into a gun shop and drugged the employees, then put them in the walk-in safe. The trio then contacted police and attempted to negotiate for their demands.
The team from the Hays County Sheriff’s Office / San Marcos Police Department included hostage negotiators and victim services personnel. Each team had a commander, a second in command, a primary negotiator and a bevy of other staff all of whom worked together to ascertain the situation and develop a plan of action.
Quick thinking, team work and information gathering were key components of a successful team. Jackson, who acted as the primary negotiator for much of the six-hour stand-off with a male perpetrator named Connie, took notes from and conferred with his team throughout the ordeal.
His voice, deep and soothing, seemed to be making headway with Connie. Jackson elicited information about Connie’s age, when he graduated from Texas State, his major, his fellow accomplices’ names, his address and more. As each piece of information came over the speaker, his team was able to piece together a more complete picture of the suspects and their motives.
About four hours into the stand-off, the negotiation team was in for a surprise – Connie was drugged by the store employees after they awoke.
With the tables turned inside the store, the team sprang into action to negotiate with Lupe and Juan, the store owner and one of his employees. Both men told police that there was a dead customer in the store but that he died from the drugs given to him by “the Hippies.”
With this new wrinkle, Jackson turned over the reins to Sgt. Jesse Hernandez from the jail division, who is Hispanic and a Spanish speaker. Lupe began making demands of his own for safe passage to Mexico along with his family and all the guns in his store.
Though the dialogue with Lupe and Juan, Jesse was able to provide his team with similar information to what Jackson provided about Connie. The group learned that Lupe was part of a Mexican cartel and was using the store as a front to smuggle guns, humans and drugs across the border.
One story below the classroom, a team of actors followed the script from Mullins with strict orders to stick to it and not ad lib. Each law enforcement team had two actors who played multiple roles, complete with accents as required for the part. It was organized chaos in both rooms – yet completely under control with Mullins’ guidance.
Mullins said the teams are judged by fellow law enforcement personnel, including several from the Federal Bureau of Investigation.
On what criteria are they scored?
According to Mullins, the most important skills are active listening and team work. Judges look for teams that listen to the perpetrator as well as each other to calmly and effectively diffuse the situation and reduce the need to storm the castle, so to speak.
The winning team, Mullins said, gets a cheap plastic trophy and a year’s worth of bragging rights. However, he acknowledged more seriously that the real benefit of the competition, winner or not, is what it teaches a team about effective communication, working together and accomplishing the task at hand as professionally as possible and with little or no loss of life in the process.
This year’s winning team was from the Comal County Sheriff’s Office. The Hays County Sheriff’s Office /San Marcos Police team took third place.
Skrocki said the judges’ comments were glowing.
“There was nothing really wrong or that we could improve on,” she said.
But the competition exercise will be used to help develop the team’s training for the year.
“It is an absolute incredible experience,” Skrocki said.
