Hostage Negotiations and Crisis Intervention, Phase I and II

Instructor: Brandon Pierpoint

Duration: 4.5 Days

Cost: $675.00

Professional Development Hours: 40 PD hours

Course Overview

This comprehensive 40-hour training program equips law enforcement professionals with essential crisis negotiation and hostage intervention skills. The course runs for four full days from 8am to 4pm local time, with the final day concluding at 12pm local time. The remaining training hours include the tested portion of the curriculum.

Course Content

The program begins with introductions and an overview of course materials, historical context, and suggested readings in lecture format. Participants will become familiar with required and suggested equipment necessary for hostage and barricaded subject responses, including hostage phones, response vehicles, ballistic equipment, tactical jackets, fiber optic cameras, listening devices, and department radio channels.

Students will master the fundamentals of hostage negotiation, including theoretical concepts covering different types of response incidents, emotional versus rational approaches, incident management, hostage-taker and hostage profiles, negotiator selection, and time management strategies. The course emphasizes active listening techniques, teaching participants how to listen effectively, paraphrase messages, and confirm understanding.

A significant component addresses mental health considerations for negotiators, exploring psychological aspects of crisis intervention, personality disorders, and mental illnesses negotiators commonly encounter. Students will examine suicide intervention, learning about emotional drivers, major depressive disorder characteristics, and risk assessment methods.

Practical skill-building includes creating "Bunches of 5" materials—preplanned responses to anticipated demands that participants develop and take back to their agencies. The course covers situation board management for organizing incident information and intelligence, Negotiations Operations Command protocol for team coordination and information sharing, and the appropriate use of third-party intermediaries.

Additional critical topics include the tactical role of negotiators within hostage response teams, strategies for managing demands and working through deadlines, and stress management techniques addressing stress effects on all parties involved and the correlation between stress and performance.

Coursework and Assignments

Students receive evening homework assignments including case law review, analysis of current incidents, and scenario scripting. Daily discussions focus on case law and recent incidents, while practical scenarios are integrated throughout the week for hands-on application. These assignments comprise the remaining five hours of the weekly training schedule.