by Belinda Neil
Apart from this debacle, I was happy with my total result from the course. I topped the academic side and Nic came top in shooting. We received glowing reports that stated we had ‘performed at a very high level, setting the standard for future negotiators attending the course’. That felt very good.
CHAPTER
4
Early days in the trade
In March 1993, five months after I had finished my first course, I was asked to stand in for one of the negotiation team members and go on call. I was still working at the DEA Support Unit. This was my first time on call and I was looking forward to getting some field experience.
One evening about 7.30 I had just finished some laps at the local pool when my negotiator’s pager activated. The duty operations inspector, who co-ordinated these callouts, told me there was a siege at a major manufacturing plant at Silverwater west of Sydney. I went to my on-call car, found the correct channel on the police radio and turned on the lights and siren. The adrenalin was already racing through my system; all my senses were fully alert. On the way to the job I wondered if Rob would be there, as he was on duty at the Tactical Operations Unit (TOU).
When I arrived at a roadblock that formed the outer perimeter and was allowed through, I was taken to one of the offices within the factory. Dennis, the commander of the negotiators, was there so I knew the situation was serious: he only attended these callouts when there was a major problem. He told me that a young employee who was upset about a work-related issue had placed a Coke can full of water near the aluminium smelting furnace. If it was dropped in there would be a chemical chain reaction, and the resulting explosion could take out the nearby M4 motorway and many surrounding buildings, homes and factories. We were standing within the potential blast zone.
We couldn’t contact the suspect until the TOU operators had secured the inner perimeter, making sure that no unauthorised persons could enter or leave the area. Once the Tactical team was in position, we could go ahead.
The first consideration is always how to contact the suspect. Would it be face to face? Would we use the telephone, perhaps a karaoke system or megaphone? Because of the potential risk of a huge explosion it was decided that face-to-face conversation was far too dangerous. We would contact him via telephone.
As Dennis and I were the only negotiators present and I was a very new trainee, Dennis made the telephone call. First contact is always an information-gathering exercise. We needed to know exactly who was in the room, why the man was there, his state of mind and what he wanted, whether he was armed and how dangerous he was to himself, the police and members of the public, and how volatile the situation was. In other words, we needed information that could assist both him and the police. Initial conversations are usually very demanding and active listening skills are essential. We did not know whether the person on the other end of the phone would be distressed, angry or upset.
While Dennis was on the telephone, I was busy making notes of his side of the conversation. These I knew would be required if any criminal charges were laid, and they could be subpoenaed for a court case or, at worst, a coroner’s inquest. Graham our team leader had now arrived, as well as the rest of the team. However, because Dennis was on the phone building a rapport with the suspect, he remained the primary negotiator.
The large Pantech negotiators’ van arrived, and we could set ourselves up properly. The truck contained two soundproofed rooms. The first, which had a number of telephone headsets, was where the primary and secondary negotiators would be seated. The team leader, who also had a headset so he could monitor what was going on, was in the second room, watching the first through a clear partition. He had access to a phone, fax machine, and police radios. Access to this negotiators’ area was very restricted, only allowed to team members, the psychiatrist who gave advice about strategy and the tactical commander.
During the evening I learned that Rob was lying in a ditch guarding the inner perimeter; conditions for the TOU guys were never as pleasant as ours. It was now raining and they were getting drenched, while remaining very warm in full fireproof overalls and body armour, their full counterterrorist kit. The temperature within the foundry was radiating out a very unpleasant 50 degrees Celsius. Although the atmosphere within the negotiators’ truck was tense we, at least, had some comforts. Though we were still within the blast zone we were enjoying cups of hot tea and coffee and eating takeaway food.
The siege went on and on. During the night, Dennis spoke to the suspect often. He was a young man who believed the company had wronged him: he even had a Eureka Stockade flag as an emblem of his preparedness to stand and fight until justice prevailed. At various times his attitude changed from hostility, threatening to blow up the factory, to frustration at his perceived injustice. As the evening wore on the threat levels changed from high to medium and back to high again. These changes and the associated adrenalin surges affected my state of alertness, and fatigue was starting to settle in. I knew I had to remain aware and ready to act if necessary: there was no room for complacency. Dennis, like the rest of us, had started work in the morning of the previous day and the siege showed no signs of ending. Graham called in a relief negotiation team to take over from us in the morning.
At this stage another problem became apparent. The M4 motorway, the main arterial roadway leading into Sydney, had been closed because it was in the blast zone and its closure was causing major chaos for morning peak-hour traffic. We were under pressure to open it again, however, we could not because the situation was too dangerous for the Tactical team to move in and make an arrest.
In the morning the relief team arrived. I felt exhausted, pleased and frustrated: exhausted from trying to take everything in, pleased that everything had worked out so far and nobody had been hurt, and frustrated because we had to hand over to another negotiating team without finishing the job ourselves.
Dennis was on the phone again, and it looked as if the young man was going to surrender. It was decided that the primary negotiator of the relief team would go forward with the TOU police on the inner perimeter and greet the young man when he gave himself up. And that’s what happened. The siege ended peacefully.
I knew this was exactly what I wanted to do: work with such a well coordinated team in a challenging and potentially difficult situation. I was sure I had found the right career for me.
Four months later I was involved in a very different case. On a very cold winter evening we were called out to deal with a nineteen-year-old guy who wanted to jump off the roof of a six-storey business block near Bankstown west of Sydney. We spoke to him for about five hours, but he would not say why he had decided to commit suicide. Meanwhile his father was confronting the commander at the base of the building, insisting on speaking to his son.
Situations like these require serious consideration, and third-person intervention is not considered lightly. Seeing a family member could cause a potential suicide victim to carry out the threat. Does a family member have the right to talk to the person at risk? Why does the family member want to be there, and what are the issues for both parties? On the other hand, if the person at risk wants to talk to a family member or friend, we also need to know why. Does the person want to commit suicide in front of them? Is the family member the cause of the problem? Is there another, safer way to hold a discussion between the two parties, perhaps when the potential suicide victim is no longer in danger?
This time the commander told the young man’s father that he would not be allowed on the rooftop to speak with his son. The father became irate and insisted. The commander paused, looked him in the eye and said, ‘If your son felt he could talk to you, would he be on that rooftop?’
It was a comment that cut to the heart of the matter. Later it came to light that the young man had just had an argument with his father. The young guy, who was unsure about his sexuality, was having difficulty dealing with his feelings and believed his father was homophobic. We couldn’t risk the father upsetting
the son further in case the son became distressed enough to jump off the roof, perhaps simply to spite his father. This proved to be the right strategy: after eight hours we were able to negotiate the son to safety. The father, in the meantime, had plenty of time to think about his prejudices and fortunately decided that his son was more important.
Early one evening seven weeks later I was called out to Auburn police station, about thirty minutes west of Sydney. When I arrived I saw a Ford F100 caged police truck parked in the driveway. The front of the truck was facing the station and the rear-caged section was facing the street, opposite a pub. Two uniform police stood at the rear of the truck next to the closed door, and Steve York, our negotiation team leader, was talking to one of these officers.
It seemed a gentleman by the name of Keith had entered the police station earlier in the evening to hand himself in. Apparently he had a number of outstanding warrants requiring him to pay a substantial amount of money that he did not have. Instead of paying the fines he wanted to go to gaol to ‘cut out the warrant’, that is, spend a few days in prison instead of paying the money.
The warrants were found and Keith was taken into custody; the caged truck was brought around and Keith put in the back to be taken to gaol. When the police were backing out of the drive, one of them noticed a movement in the rear. Keith was holding a knife which had been taped to his back. The officer immediately stopped the truck and with his partner went to open the rear door. Keith screamed at them that he had a knife and would stab them if they tried to pull him out, and that he also wanted to kill himself. That was when the police locked the door again and asked for specialist help from the TOU, including negotiators.
Steve and I were the only ones there. He asked me, ‘Well, are you right to be the primary negotiator?’ I hadn’t been asked before, and was only due to undertake the second part of my training the following month, so I felt pretty anxious at the prospect. At the same time, I was honoured that Steve was confident I could do the job. Face-to-face negotiations are considered the most difficult and the most dangerous, as the negotiator is in full view of the subject. I knew I needed to be very careful of my body language and to be sure that my actions remained consistent with my words.
The Tactical team, who? had just arrived and were organising their equipment, gave me the go-ahead, so I walked over and stood about a metre away from the back of the police truck. I could just see Keith through the two small cut-outs on either side of the door, like tiny windows, and heard him muttering to himself. His face was not visible, but I had no doubt he could see mine if he chose to look.
‘Hello, Keith,’ I said. ‘My name is Belinda and I am a police negotiator. I am here to help you.’
‘Just fuck off all of you. Fuck off.’
‘Keith, I can see that you are very upset …’
‘Just fuck off.’
‘Keith, can you tell me why you have the knife?’
Keith yelled, ‘Because I just want to die, just fuck off and leave me in peace. You’re nothing but a bunch of fuckers, get fucked.’
‘Keith, why do you feel this way?’
‘Just fuck off, I want to die.’
‘Keith, I would like to see you safely out of the truck,’
‘Don’t you get it? Fuck off!’
Not a good start, and the conversation continued like this for about an hour. I asked Keith various open questions about his life, work, family, interests, and Keith yelled obscenities. After a while I needed a break.
‘Keith, I am going to speak to some other police,’ I said. ‘I will be back soon. I would like you to promise me you will not hurt yourself while I am gone.’
‘Yeah, sure,’ he replied. ‘Just call out my name if you need me.’
I left the uniformed police at the rear of the truck and found Steve. Not having seen the Tactical police at the rear of the truck, I asked him where they were. He took me around the back of the police station and I could see them practising a tactical resolution – assault – using another caged truck. This was not a good scenario. Due to the confined nature of the rear of the truck, they would only be able to have one operator in at a time, so the momentum of the assault would be to Keith’s advantage.
I spoke to Steve about the negotiations and asked how I was going.
‘Do you want the good news or the bad news?’ he said.
I gulped. ‘There’s bad news?’
‘This is the third time he has been involved in a siege with police, and the other occasions were all tactical resolutions.’ He explained that on the first occasion. Keith had gone to a service station in Ashfield, taken a petrol hose off the bowser and started spraying it around, threatening to light it. The amount of petrol flowing around and into the gutters would have caused substantial damage to the service station and the surrounding area if it had been ignited. Negotiation had failed and armed police had moved very quickly to disarm him, putting their own lives at risk. On the second occasion, Keith had been at his home unit armed with a knife and threatened suicide, and again police had been forced to risk their lives to save him.
After hearing all this, I was not feeling too confident about resolving this situation by means of the negotiation process. However, I was not yet prepared to concede. I returned to the rear of the truck, ensuring I kept my back to the pub so I wasn’t distracted by the row of spectators who had gathered to watch what was happening.
‘Hi Keith, I’m back, how are you going?’
We picked up right where we had left off and went on for another half hour. Eventually I had had enough of the swearing and verbal abuse.
‘Keith, I have been speaking with you for some time, I have been calm and talking normally. Why are you swearing and abusing me? I am not being unkind.’
Then he said, ‘My name’s not Keith! It’s fucking Kevin!’
I couldn’t believe I had made such an elementary mistake. Nobody likes people getting their name wrong, no one. I quickly apologised to Kevin and we started to have a normal conversation about his life, his work possibilities, and family.
At one stage he wanted to go to the toilet. I immediately said, ‘Kevin, if you put the knife through the window and drop it to the ground, we can open the door, let you out and take you to the toilet.’ He wasn’t ready to come out, believing the police would assault him, and knowing what had happened in previous sieges I could understand why. Then he said, ‘Too late,’ and I had to jump out of the way as the urine splashed out from underneath the rear door.
Eventually Kevin started warming to the idea of leaving the truck. As I was discovering, negotiator situations can either be resolved quickly or they can take hours. I believe the time taken depends very much on the person coming to terms with their own fears, and perhaps realising, through conversation with a negotiator, that peaceful resolution is their best or only option. If the negotiator can build up enough rapport with the person, the situation is more likely to be resolved peacefully.
It took another thirty or forty minutes to convince Kevin to drop the knife through the window. I started to talk him through the next phase, explaining what would happen, including impressing upon him that I would be there. Tactical police officers were positioned near the rear of the truck at this point.
One of the Tactical police opened the door and Kevin came out and into custody. I made sure I was standing behind the Tactical police at this stage so he could see I was still there for him. It was also possible that Kevin could have another breakdown, creating another siege. If that happened other negotiators could use my report to remind him that the police had kept their word and he was unharmed. Kevin was then taken by uniform police for psychiatric assessment; the chilling thing about this is that sometimes the person is allowed to leave the hospital even before the police have made it back to the station.
I learned two lessons from this. Always confirm a person’s name, and search prisoners properly before they are put into police vehicles.
There was a chilling
sequel. About twelve months later I learned that Kevin had climbed up onto a pylon of the Sydney Harbour Bridge and jumped to his death. I felt sad and frustrated that the system had let him down. If only someone had given him the help he so desperately needed, the outcome might have been very different.
CHAPTER
5
Not a great start to a marriage
At the end of April 1993 I went on a three-month European holiday with some girlfriends. This was my final fling as an unmarried woman: Rob and I had arranged our wedding for November. After a twenty-five-day Contiki trip around various places, I went to Switzerland to visit one of my best friends, who was working as an au pair. I spent some time in the Greek islands, then visited Thailand on my way home. I had a wonderful time.
In July, I returned to work at the Drug Enforcement Agency Support Unit. Once again I was asked to fill in for one of the permanent on-call negotiation teams.
On 26 August my on-call negotiator pager activated. A man had just shot and killed three people in Redfern in inner Sydney, had taken off and was now involved in a standoff with local police at Burwood about ten kilometres further west. I had to get there fast as part of a negotiation team, and the SPG TOU was on its way.
My skin started to prickle. This was an extremely serious situation. I knew Rob was working at the Tactical Operations Unit that day and was worried that he might be coming to Burwood as well. With my mind racing and heart pumping, I put the blue light on the roof of the police car and took off for Burwood at high speed.
By the time I got to Canterbury Road, Canterbury, still travelling at high speed with lights and sirens, the on-call negotiation pager activated again. I didn’t have a mobile to ring in – in those days mobile phones were quite rare, and the only ones available were very expensive and about the size of a house brick. I knew Canterbury police station was not far away; I would be able to find a phone there. When I did, I was told that the man was in custody and negotiators were being called off. I tried ringing the SPG TOU office but there was no response. I thought Rob might have been at another job, and reasoned that, if he had been involved in this situation, the offender was now in custody so all should be well. I got back in my car and started to drive back towards the city.