TEXAS STATE UNIVERSITY
Hoping for the best is always encouraged, but law enforcement officers prepared for the worst during the 34th annual Crisis Negotiation Competition and Seminar. Teams from police precincts all over Texas gathered in San Marcos the week before the Spring semester began for a three-day training competition focused on hostage negotiations. Officers participated in a two-day simulation where their task was to negotiate with hostage-takers to deescalate the situation and return hostages to safety, followed by a seminar on the last day. Stations were set up throughout the Criminal Justice building at TXST and throughout campus where criminal justice students, volunteers and actors played the roles of hostage-takers.
Over thirty teams competed this year. Law enforcement teams are mainly from Texas, but the competition is open to all law enforcement with teams traveling from California, New York, Oklahoma and Virginia. There was even an international team traveling from Singapore. Judges were brought in from a variety of policing backgrounds including Andy Brown, formally the team leader for the Scottish National Police and who is now the lead negotiator for the Order of the Jesuits. Other international judges included Thomas Greis who is the team leader of the Austrian National Police Force and Matthias Prohl who is the team leader for the German National Police.
Wayman Mullins, P.h.D. is a professor emeritus who started the com- petition as a way to give real life experience and practice to officers and law enforcement teams in regards to hostage negotiations. Duwayne Poorboy is a sergeant with the San Marcos Police Department and has been involved with the competition for over 20 years and helps organize the event. He actually started as a student in the event back in 2003.
“What we try to provide here is an opportunity for a team to work a very complex problem,” Poorboy said. “[The focus is for the teams to] stay to the basics of active listening, empathy, rapport.”
The competition is designed to be a realistic simulation starting with a brief in the morning where teams were given limited information in the form of intel audios that Duwayne’s wife, Molly Poorboy helped write and record. Molly works with the Wimberley Players Theatre Group where she was able to bring on actors to play roles in the simulations. Competitors then took the information from the brief and brought it back to their team to relay the circumstances and then created a game plan. The officer teams built a strategy that included gathering more information from a mock intel table set up in a separate location within the criminal justice building. They made phone calls to actors and students who followed scripts as hostage- takers as the officers attempted to gain information and negotiate safe release of hostages. On the third day of the competition, teams participate in seminars that debrief incidents that occurred during competition. Teams will present powerpoints of lessons learned and skills built during the process.
“Active listening, empathy, rapport — those are critical human communication skills. So the more we can do those, and not wait till we get into these special circumstances; if we can practice those skills, I think we’re going to be much better off,” Poorboy said. In reference to negotiations and to most situations in general, “the world would be better placed if we learn to communicate with each other better.”
The Crisis Negotiation Competition and Seminar will return next year with more training and simulations to help practice and increase these important skills in law enforcement communities all over the world.
