Will he go over the edge? - negotiating in a standoff

A man sits on the edge of a quarry, his legs dangling down. Below him is a 10-storey drop.

He is contemplating suicide. The police are informed and rush to the scene.

Superintendent Pierre Calleja, who has been trained in how to conduct negotiations in such situations, gets to within a few metres and starts chatting to the man.

An ambulance and SAG police are called in but are kept at a distance as catching sight of them could literally push the man over the edge.

It is five o'clock on an October evening. As it is about to get dark, a landrover with a special floodlight is called out to stand by.

The man, who is obviously suffering from a psychiatric illness, is determined to kill himself. He believes people are blaming him for the Twin Towers attack.

Supt Calleja asks him coldly whether he is contemplating suicide. He seems to have struck a chord.

"But you can't fly an aircraft, can you," Supt Calleja tells him.

"Of course I can't," the man replies.

"So how are you expecting them to prove you did it?"

"I know you believe that I had nothing to do with it, but how can I convince them?"

The dialogue goes on as nature's light is dying out. The police are afraid that the man might get tired and lose his balance, but he does not want anyone to get too close.

He is told that the area is going to be floodlit. Five hours later, in the cold, the man is still sitting on the edge, but Supt Calleja has slowly inched his way towards him so that now he is only an arm's length away.

Calleja continues to engage him in conversation. "Look at me, I can help you to persuade them it was not you."

The man looks, and is finally persuaded to come back from the brink. But before he has hardly made a move, rescue police who have crawled up behind him, harnessed for any eventuality, grab him and pull him to safety.

The incident was a typical standoff in which police have to negotiate to resolve a situation.

Supt Calleja, who recounted the case in an interview, said that with potential suicide it was very important to ask the person bluntly whether he is thinking of killing himself. The negotiator would then try to identify the problem and to convince the person that suicide is not the solution.

"You can get standoffs in cases of suicide, but you can also have criminal situations. In hostage situations involving criminal activities, the circumstances are different."

Here the situation would be more or less defined as a "crime in action" and although the basics of negotiation are put into practice, the logistics would be quite different, Supt Calleja said.

Supt Calleja, along with Maj. John Schembri from the army, had done an intensive three-week course in negotiation at Hendon College in the UK. The course was attended by 16 officers from different constabularies, an FBI agent, and the two Maltese officers.

One of the lecturers was PC Trevor Locke, who was a hostage in the Iranian Embassy in London in 1980 and who had tackled the leader of the gunmen, saving the life of an SAS soldier during the raid.

The course at Hendon followed a shorter one locally which had led to the selection of the two officers.

"The course was tough, with lectures from 8 a.m. to 1 p.m. and practical sessions from 3 to 11 p.m. The sessions were very realistic and you'd get into the spirit of things, as if the standoff were for real.

"We were trained in several types of situations ranging from racist acts to suicides to terrorism. It is not easy to convince a person not to use violence and end it peacefully," Supt Calleja said.

One of the most important elements, he said, was planning, which had to take place in the little time before arriving at the scene. If hostages are involved you have to think about their welfare as well as how they would be handled if released.

The most important thing is to have a field commander in charge to whom the negotiator refers. Decisions are made by this officer, who would have the special squads under his command.

The negotiator is not the person who can take the decisions there and then, particularly when it comes to demands, Supt Calleja said.

Training is of the essence and since the course was followed by the two officers, two hijack exercises have been carried out locally. "Practice makes perfect and such exercises give people a sound background of what a real hijack would be like and how one should act," he said.

Similarly, teamwork is fundamental in such situations. When working in a negotiating cell environment, the last thing that one would want is a situation where things are not being done collectively.

Generally such situations require three negotiators, the lead negotiator assisted by two others.

"My experience abroad taught me that it was team spirit and encouragement that sometimes saved the negotiators from snapping.

"Here a word of praise goes to all my colleagues, both from the military and the police. I must say that they have always enthusiastically demonstrated such team spirit during exercises, especially when they are pushed to the very limit in extraordinary situations," Supt Calleja said.

"Fortunately we have had only one serious case of a standoff involving a hostage where we had to negotiate, and it ended well. But you never know what's round the corner and therefore one has to be prepared for any eventuality.

"Undoubtedly, such situations would make your hair turn a little greyer," he said.