‘NCIS: New Orleans’ Season 6 Episode 10 is a good lesson in FBI’s ‘Shut up and listen’ hostage negotiation tactic though Pride failed
Episode 10 of ‘NCIS: New Orleans’ saw the squad, especially special agent Dwayne Pride, get justice for the murder of special agent Chris Lasalle (Lucas Black). Of course, it wasn’t easy, and not least because the man behind the crime was cult leader Eddie Barrett (Eddie Cahil).
The team was caught in a hostage situation. And one where the negotiator -- Pride -- was the hostage. In general, hostage situations can be tricky. Even with years of training, it is difficult to predict how someone would react in a high-pressure situation. Especially with a tonne of federal officers outside waiting.
One of the key strategies that the FBI employs in situations like these is called, in plain language, “Shut up and listen”. Also called the stairway model, it was developed by the FBI for negotiating in hostage situations, where emotions run high and rational thinking is often absent.
The New York Police Department’s hostage negotiation tactic motto, “Talk to Me”, according to a Harvard paper, also works on the same principle. It “emphasizes communication as an essential police negotiation technique for their crisis negotiators, and for good reason. Opening up avenues of communication to your counterpart signals that you are ready to listen, an integral first step to building rapport between negotiating counterparts by building trust, as well as displaying empathy, which can lead to further mutual gains at the bargaining table as the negotiation progresses beyond the initial stages.”
In the episode, Pride attempts to do just that. He listens to Barrett in order to understand what he wants: In this case, attention -- not just from the federal officers but also from the media.
According to former FBI negotiator Chris Voss, “It's not me bringing emotion in; it's already there. It's the elephant in the room. There's this monstrous creature in the middle of every communication: it's what we want and it's based on what we care about.”
Voss adds, “Each one of us, we make every single decision based on what we care about and that makes decision-making, by definition, an emotional process. My approach is, let's stop kidding ourselves. Hostage negotiators don't kid themselves about emotions. It's all about navigating emotions, and one step leads to another, which then puts you in a position to influence others. It's based on trust and it allows you to influence outcomes. It allows you to change people's minds.”
And for Pride, this mostly succeeds against Barrett. Until Barrett gets inside his head and talks to him about how he knows where his daughter is. Where there are personal stakes, even the strongest of negotiators are vulnerable and that’s what caused Pride’s fall from grace -- he killed Barrett.
Hostage negotiators are not infallible. And if 'NCIS: New Orleans' Season 6 Episode 10 was any lesson, when they are that close to the situation -- after all, Pride and Lasalle were friends -- even the best of tactics can just as easily fail.
'NCIS: New Orleans' Season 6 airs Tuesdays at 9 p.m. only on CBS.