CALM IN CRISIS

Officers practice crisis negotiation skills during annual competition

It takes specialized skills to handle a crisis situation, and it is no easy task to calm a person down when in an elevated emotional state. This is not an unfamiliar situation for law enforcement of all agencies, and the best crisis negotiators from across the country, and even from other countries, have found a unique way to polish these skills. Texas State University School of Criminal Justice and Criminology, the Hays County Sheriff’s Office and the San Marcos Police Department hosted the 34th annual Competition and Seminar for Crisis Negotiations from Jan. 9 to 11 at the Hines Academic Center.

According to a press release from TXST, the competition provides advanced and basic training for crisis negotiators and personnel involved with critical incident situations, which include correctional officers, tactical and special operations team members, other crisis response personnel, administrators and managers.

There were 32 teams that participated in 2024 from various municipal and state law enforcement units. The local team consisted of municipal police officers from across the county and the Sheriff’s Department. San Marcos Police Department Sgt. Duwayne Poorboy said there are crisis negotiators in each of the departments.

“We’ve always been a joint team, SWAT and negotiations,” Poorboy said, adding that county and city officers can both be on the SWAT team. “At this point, we’re all under the SWAT belt.”

Poorboy said the competition started in 1990, and he also has a lengthy history with the competition as he first attended in 2003 as a student. He said officers come from around Texas in addition to Florida, California, Illinois and even Singapore to compete, and judges come from around the U.S. as well as Austria, Germany and Scotland.

“Wayman [Mullins, TXST School of Criminal Justice and Criminology professor emeritus,] and a friend of his that worked for SAPD (San Antonio Police Department), they’re both psychologists by training and they started joining these negotiation teams and decided to have this competition,” Poorboy said. “We bring judges [in] that are experts in the field of crisis negotiations.”

The competition involves a proposed scenario with student actors playing the people on the other end of the phone line. The officers will spend hours negotiating, taking meticulous notes and working together as a team while the expert crisis negotiators evaluate them on a set of criteria. The notes on the board in the negotiating room include things like the name of the key players on the other line, hooks — things that get them interested or more engaged and should be discussed, barbs — things that make them angry and should not be discussed, the demands, and the officers that are not on the phone will include goals for the negotiator to touch on. And just when things appear to be coming to a conclusion, Mullins will throw in a twist that the officers will have to work through.

“We look at their skills,” Mullins said. “Active listening skills, basic communication skills, teamwork, intelligence gathering, staying in their lane, dealing with stress, handling demands [and] using time as an effective tool.”

Poorboy said the same skills used to de-escalate an emotional perpetrator can be generalized throughout all aspects of life.

“The skills that we use: active listening, building rapport, showing empathy, influence [and] those kinds of things. … Generally speaking we’d be better off if we all used those skills,” Poorboy said. “That’s how relationships are built.”

Learn more about the competition at this link cj.txst.edu/events/hostage. html.