An Evaluation of Police Negotiator Tactics and their Ability to Influence Marauding Terrorist Attack Incidents

Todd, Matthew (2024) An Evaluation of Police Negotiator Tactics and their Ability to Influence Marauding Terrorist Attack Incidents. Doctoral thesis (PhD), Manchester Metropolitan University.

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Abstract

This thesis examines the validity of using existing police hostage and crisis negotiation techniques at marauding terrorist attacks (MTA) as a means of identifying behaviours from perpetrators’ and negotiators’ (often competing) communication. The thesis accordingly introduces the reader to the prominent models used in hostage and crisis negotiation and new models developed through the UK hostage and crisis terrorism negotiation training programme before analysing their use and effectiveness at three MTA incidents: the Hypercashe siege in Paris, 2015; the Bataclan Theatre attack in Paris, 2015; and the attack at the Pulse night club in Orlando in 2016. Data drawn upon, in relation to these three cases, relates to interviews involving negotiators, hostages and psychologists, or transcripts of calls made between negotiator and perpetrator. The use of transcripts, in particular, has enabled a focus, in this thesis, upon the relatively new concept of using linguistic analysis to explore crisis negotiation (Archer et al, 2018 and Archer, 2020), with the aim of demonstrating how an understanding of language-in-use can form part of the police hostage negotiator’s ‘tool kit’ of skills when deploying to a terrorist incident. While there is a large body of work in the field of hostage and crisis negotiation, both in the contemporary approach to suicide intervention, barricade siege, hostage taking and kidnap, and in the field of terrorist negotiation; the study of negotiation during an MTA has not yet been researched academically. Reasons for this include: the infrequency of attacks, the limited opportunity for authorities to engage with perpetrators, and the limited, and ethically challenging access to the negotiations following a terrorist incident. In this study, the author’s practical experience in the field of hostage negotiation allowed unprecedented access to the negotiators, hostages and psychologists involved in the two Paris-based MTA case studies making up this thesis. The findings from those case studies suggest that negotiators at MTAs rely heavily on traditional and contemporary hostage negotiation techniques – especially empathetic and active listening. The ability to analyse the transcripts of the Orlando incident nonetheless demonstrates the importance of concepts that are relatively new to crisis negotiators. They include “Reality Paradigms” (Archer, 2018), namely, the metaphorical lens through which perpetrator and negotiator view their situation at a particular moment in time, and their modal worlds, that is, the needs, desires and wants they signal through their language choices (Archer, 2018). This thesis argues that, by identifying such reality paradigms and modal worlds, we can create new opportunities for negotiators to develop strategies to move a perpetrator to a different reality and, consequently, an alternative possible solution. Although MTAs, by their very nature, do not lend themselves to perpetrators changing their minds completely as a solution, the evidence from this thesis suggests that understanding perpetrators’ reality paradigms and modal worlds can nonetheless help negotiators to find a “common ground” with which to communicate with terrorists and thus “buy time”: one of the main tenets for a negotiator, regardless of the scenario they may face. In summary, this thesis argues that traditional contemporary hostage and crisis negotiation skills are effective at MTA’s and provides new learning opportunities for hostage negotiators when facing marauding terrorist incidents and suggests possibilities for strengthening their training in the future.