By WHITNEY SPIVEY
news@ColumbiaMissourian.com

Since 1976, the Columbia Police Department has employed a small team of men and women to talk their way through hostage incidents, suicides and similar emergencies.

These carefully trained crisis negotiators deal with depressed drug addicts, violent kidnappers and an assortment of other individuals in need of emotional and psychological help who come to the attention of law enforcement when they act out in ways that threaten others.

Columbia’s crisis negotiation team — known as the “hostage negotiation team” until 1998 — receives basic training at Northwestern University in Evanston, Ill.

The negotiation courses team members complete are applied every month in Missouri through practice sessions or simulated exercises, in addition to real-life situations.

All crisis negotiators are required to be Columbia police officers for a minimum of three years before they can apply to become a member of the team. Once they are accepted, their responsibilities are part-time.

Crisis negotiators frequently handle code red incidents, defined by the police as “any incident where an officer or citizen is subjected to sniper attack, confronted by a barricaded person, faced with a hostage situation, or any situation in which there is a high risk of death or serious physical injury to an officer or citizen.”

That may include armed robbery, kidnapping, domestic disputes, suicide intervention or dealings with violent or mentally ill suspects.

The team’s primary responsibility is to peacefully resolve such critical incidents with communication skills and specialized training to positively influence the outcome.

This duty involves communicating with the suspect as early as possible, limiting the number of negotiators, clearly identifying the negotiator and assessing the suspect’s willingness and ability to negotiate rationally.

Columbia’s crisis negotiation team has both men and women who often work together in emergency situations, except in certain circumstances when the gender of the negotiator may make a difference.

For example, if a suicidal woman is upset with her husband, she may not want to speak to a male negotiator.

“One important aspect of negotiations is to get to the root problem,” said Sgt. John Worden, the team commander. “The surface issues are what the subject may be saying, but the root issue may be something different. We try to determine the best negotiator for the situation.”

A coed team was used last summer when an incident led to a community debate about Taser use and crisis negotiation.

On July 25, Philip McDuffy, 45, attempted suicide by threatening to jump off a bridge at Providence Road and Interstate 70. Two crisis negotiators tried to persuade McDuffy to walk south on the bridge, where he would be only about 3 feet above ground.

At this location, other officers could safely use Tasers to temporarily paralyze him and remove him from the bridge.

The plan went awry when a Taser was fired at McDuffy but only one of the probes made contact. McDuffy was not paralyzed, but instead quickly shuffled to a higher location, away from the officers.

Five seconds later, a different police officer successfully used a second Taser, causing McDuffy to lose consciousness and fall 15 feet onto an embankment below. He broke several bones and fractured his skull in the fall.

The event caused an uproar in the Columbia community.

Grass Roots Organizing, a nonprofit human rights advocacy group, alleged that police had incorrectly interpreted their department’s Taser policy. The organization argued that McDuffy was not in a safe location when he was brought down with the device.

Leaders of the organization requested that the city reconsider the purchase of 40 new Tasers using a grant from the U.S. Department of Justice.

While many argued that use of Tasers was inappropriate, the police department thought otherwise.

“Tasers are a valuable tool that can bring a peaceful resolution to an incident much quicker,” Worden said. “In some cases, they may even prevent the situation from escalating into a code red call-out.”