How to Play the Waiting Game

Dealing with eccentrics and crusaders who seize hostages is one of the most delicate tasks in police work. Since their motives and personalities obviously differ, there are no standard methods for dealing with them. The Israelis believe in force: "Storm them as soon as you can," says one of their anti-terrorist experts.

U.S. police have developed a different approach: keep talking, keep calm, wait them out. All of the FBI's 59 field divisions have agents who have had special training at the FBI National Academy in Quantico, Va. It is the FBI policy that only if the hostages seem in imminent danger of being killed is an attack normally ordered. While a specially trained FBI negotiator tries to lower the level of tension and assess the hostage taker's motives and weaknesses, other agents seek information that will let them develop a psychological profile of the criminal. What makes him angry? What grudges does he hold? Is he a loner?

The FBI will let any demand of the criminal be a point of discussion. His wishes in small matters (food, newspapers) are granted.

The San Francisco police department began hostage-negotiating courses in 1974. Since then its graduates have faced 15 major hostage incidents--and saved all the victims without firing a shot. The emphasis in the program is on psychology; the key rule is to stay cool. About 75% of the officers seeking to attend the program have been turned down because they show signs of inability to handle the extraordinary stress of a hostage situation.

Most metropolitan police departments will bring in sharpshooters when hostages are involved, partly to keep less trained personnel out of the action. "All you need is one officer on the scene to fire randomly and it could be all over for the hostages," explains San Francisco Police Lieut. Richard Klapp, the city's top hostage expert.

Police departments disagree on whether authorities should make promises they do not intend to keep. "If you have to resort to lying to get people out, you lie," says a San Francisco officer. An Indiana sheriff would go further, saying of one hostage taker in a recent incident: "I'd have given him title to Hawaii." John L. Carey, president of the Indiana Bar Association, sharply disagrees, maintaining: "The government shouldn't give its word and then go back on it."

On one point, almost all experts agree: television and newspapers need to restrain themselves in covering a hostage scene. Many police officials would like to screen all press information emerging from such an incident. They contend that only the negotiators know what kind of press coverage might turn a gunman violent--if it got back to him via TV, radio or possibly a newspaper. Nor can reporters generally know when the bargaining has reached a sensitive point and coverage should be cautious.

Police in Warrensville Heights, Ohio, were appalled last week when a live telecast showed Gunman Cory Moore where sharpshooters were stationed as he held Police Captain Leo Keglovic hostage. "They knew Cory had a TV," fumed Police Chief Craig Merchant. When Cory saw the broadcast he shouted into a telephone: "Everything's off right now!" Cory later surrendered after getting a promise that President Carter would telephone him. In a Chicago incident, a TV helicopter circled a hostage site, nearly frightening the gunmen (who mistook it for a possible police assault) into a violent reaction. Such moves enrage authorities. Says a Chicago police official: "Press and police must get together and work out some guidelines."

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