1 00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:03,770 [MUSIC PLAYING] 2 00:00:07,550 --> 00:00:12,470 Here's a case study from my first real hostage negotiation, 3 00:00:12,470 --> 00:00:14,630 where I learned a lot about honing 4 00:00:14,630 --> 00:00:16,930 my skills as a negotiator. 5 00:00:16,927 --> 00:00:19,007 REPORTER: Well, David, at about 8:30 this morning, 6 00:00:19,010 --> 00:00:21,710 four people at least, two believed to be armed, 7 00:00:21,710 --> 00:00:24,800 attempted to hold up the Chase Manhattan branch in the Park 8 00:00:24,800 --> 00:00:26,060 Slope section of Brooklyn. 9 00:00:26,060 --> 00:00:28,420 This is a nice section of New York City, by the way. 10 00:00:28,420 --> 00:00:30,390 I'm in New York City one morning, 11 00:00:30,385 --> 00:00:31,765 getting ready to do an interview. 12 00:00:31,760 --> 00:00:35,980 One of my hostage negotiation compadres, one of my colleagues 13 00:00:35,978 --> 00:00:37,518 comes up to my desk and says, there's 14 00:00:37,520 --> 00:00:40,470 a bank robbery with hostages in Brooklyn. 15 00:00:40,470 --> 00:00:41,510 Let's go. 16 00:00:41,510 --> 00:00:43,490 We pull the car up. 17 00:00:43,490 --> 00:00:45,530 We're right on top of the inner perimeter. 18 00:00:45,530 --> 00:00:47,510 We bail out of the car, low crawl 19 00:00:47,510 --> 00:00:49,010 over to the bank across the street 20 00:00:49,010 --> 00:00:50,960 that's got the command post in it. 21 00:00:50,960 --> 00:00:54,000 Everyone has been seduced at the very beginning 22 00:00:54,000 --> 00:00:57,620 to assume that this is going to be a short, sweet operation. 23 00:00:57,620 --> 00:00:59,690 Apparently, they tried to enter the bank 24 00:00:59,690 --> 00:01:02,750 as three employees were getting ready to open the branch. 25 00:01:02,750 --> 00:01:04,730 That resulted in the bank alarm going off, 26 00:01:04,730 --> 00:01:06,500 and the hostage drama began. 27 00:01:06,500 --> 00:01:09,110 Hundreds of police officers from the 78th Precinct 28 00:01:09,110 --> 00:01:12,230 arrived at the scene, cordoning off about four city blocks. 29 00:01:12,230 --> 00:01:14,570 No one's been moving in or out of this area 30 00:01:14,570 --> 00:01:17,990 except for the police since 8:30 this morning, which 31 00:01:17,990 --> 00:01:20,350 is about 5 and 1/2 hours now. 32 00:01:20,350 --> 00:01:23,210 A police tactical squad is on the scene, as well as a police 33 00:01:23,210 --> 00:01:23,990 chopper. 34 00:01:23,990 --> 00:01:27,140 The FBI and the NYPD have established contact 35 00:01:27,140 --> 00:01:28,960 with the alleged robbers. 36 00:01:28,960 --> 00:01:32,210 The three bank employees are OK as far as we know. 37 00:01:32,210 --> 00:01:34,310 Police are looking for a peaceful resolution 38 00:01:34,310 --> 00:01:37,160 to this hostage drama unfolding right now. 39 00:01:37,160 --> 00:01:39,190 Reporting live in New York. 40 00:01:39,190 --> 00:01:42,830 We got the actual recordings from the Chase Manhattan Bank 41 00:01:42,830 --> 00:01:44,420 robbery hostage taking. 42 00:01:44,420 --> 00:01:47,120 We're going to go through when I came onto the phone. 43 00:01:47,120 --> 00:01:49,380 I was the second negotiator on the phone. 44 00:01:49,380 --> 00:01:53,420 I'd been given some guidance-- some guidelines to follow, 45 00:01:53,420 --> 00:01:55,780 and I was ready with my process-- 46 00:01:55,782 --> 00:01:56,992 I was ready with the process. 47 00:01:56,990 --> 00:01:58,070 And this is what happened. 48 00:02:29,280 --> 00:02:33,910 So what I've just started with is 49 00:02:33,910 --> 00:02:39,550 I'm already using a version of the late night FM DJ voice. 50 00:02:39,550 --> 00:02:41,200 I'm making a point to downward inflect 51 00:02:41,200 --> 00:02:42,730 with everything that I say. 52 00:02:42,730 --> 00:02:46,870 The other thing I've just done is I've created my identity. 53 00:02:46,870 --> 00:02:49,430 All I did was said, this is Chris, 54 00:02:49,430 --> 00:02:51,400 you're going to be talking to me now. 55 00:02:51,400 --> 00:02:53,080 Joe's gone. 56 00:02:53,080 --> 00:02:54,820 Now, our control-oriented negotiator 57 00:02:54,820 --> 00:02:56,780 over on the other side, his voice 58 00:02:56,780 --> 00:02:58,630 has just come up a little bit. 59 00:02:58,632 --> 00:03:00,342 He's a little rattled and he doesn't know 60 00:03:00,340 --> 00:03:01,470 exactly what to do with it. 61 00:03:14,350 --> 00:03:20,060 Now, what he's done is this is the first time that we've heard 62 00:03:20,060 --> 00:03:24,230 from a hostage the entire day. 63 00:03:24,230 --> 00:03:25,710 Now, he's not out of moves yet. 64 00:03:25,710 --> 00:03:28,950 This is a control-oriented negotiator himself. 65 00:03:28,950 --> 00:03:30,950 He's gone and gotten one of the hostages. 66 00:03:30,953 --> 00:03:32,373 He's going to put her on the phone 67 00:03:32,370 --> 00:03:36,160 just long enough to confirm that she's alive without actually 68 00:03:36,158 --> 00:03:37,198 raising the threat level. 69 00:04:36,460 --> 00:04:39,180 So at this point again, notice, I'm 70 00:04:39,180 --> 00:04:41,730 not really trying to hammer him a lot with his name. 71 00:04:41,730 --> 00:04:44,940 As a matter of fact, Billy is not his name. 72 00:04:44,940 --> 00:04:46,220 He wouldn't give us a name. 73 00:04:46,220 --> 00:04:47,970 That's just a name we came up with earlier 74 00:04:47,970 --> 00:04:50,430 to try to personalize him to us, and vise versa. 75 00:04:50,432 --> 00:04:52,142 And what we've got at this point in time, 76 00:04:52,140 --> 00:04:56,270 we've narrowed down that the van outside is probably his. 77 00:04:56,273 --> 00:04:57,693 We've gone to his neighborhood, we 78 00:04:57,690 --> 00:04:59,460 found somebody that knew him. 79 00:04:59,457 --> 00:05:01,287 We brought him to the scene, listened to him 80 00:05:01,290 --> 00:05:03,700 talk on the phone and said, is this the same guy 81 00:05:03,700 --> 00:05:04,950 that you know to own this van? 82 00:05:04,950 --> 00:05:07,620 So we got a voice identification on him. 83 00:05:07,620 --> 00:05:09,900 We already know who's inside. 84 00:05:09,900 --> 00:05:12,330 What I want to do is brace him with this 85 00:05:12,330 --> 00:05:15,750 in a way that doesn't cause a volatile reaction because he's 86 00:05:15,750 --> 00:05:17,790 still got hostages inside. 87 00:05:17,790 --> 00:05:20,390 As far as we know, he's still got guns inside. 88 00:05:20,388 --> 00:05:22,178 We don't know for sure what's going on yet. 89 00:06:12,200 --> 00:06:14,600 Now, he is all over the place right now. 90 00:06:14,600 --> 00:06:17,660 I am being completely surprised by most of the things 91 00:06:17,660 --> 00:06:19,570 that he's saying at this point in time. 92 00:06:19,573 --> 00:06:20,993 And the majority of what I'm doing 93 00:06:20,990 --> 00:06:24,830 is mirroring, which, again, this is how it's so useful to you 94 00:06:24,830 --> 00:06:27,860 if you've got this as a skill in your repertoire 95 00:06:27,860 --> 00:06:29,660 because you can be caught off guard by what 96 00:06:29,660 --> 00:06:31,280 the other person is saying. 97 00:06:31,278 --> 00:06:33,318 And you just start repeating what they're saying, 98 00:06:33,320 --> 00:06:35,030 mirroring it, and they keep talking. 99 00:06:35,030 --> 00:06:37,410 Now, this is a control freak negotiator. 100 00:06:37,410 --> 00:06:39,440 He's been completely control-oriented 101 00:06:39,440 --> 00:06:40,930 from the very beginning. 102 00:06:40,930 --> 00:06:43,340 And he catches himself babbling all over the place, 103 00:06:43,340 --> 00:06:44,990 and these are the critical issues 104 00:06:44,990 --> 00:06:48,110 that end up getting the getaway driver identified, arrested, 105 00:06:48,110 --> 00:06:51,530 and convicted because he's blurting this stuff out 106 00:06:51,530 --> 00:06:53,890 uncontrollably because the mirroring is bringing it out 107 00:06:53,890 --> 00:06:54,390 of him. 108 00:07:21,250 --> 00:07:24,000 I did something really good and then something really stupid 109 00:07:24,000 --> 00:07:26,880 right after. 110 00:07:26,880 --> 00:07:29,600 I said it's registered to a Chris Watts. 111 00:07:29,600 --> 00:07:30,930 And he says, OK. 112 00:07:30,930 --> 00:07:32,040 That was just a statement. 113 00:07:32,040 --> 00:07:33,780 That was just an observation. 114 00:07:33,780 --> 00:07:35,940 In sum and substance, he's almost completely 115 00:07:35,940 --> 00:07:38,290 admitted to who he is at this point in time. 116 00:07:38,290 --> 00:07:44,380 And I had him on the ropes and if I had just said to him, 117 00:07:44,380 --> 00:07:47,140 I know this is you, with a downward inflecting voice, 118 00:07:47,135 --> 00:07:49,515 I think the chances are very good that he would admit it. 119 00:08:01,650 --> 00:08:06,270 Now we got a brand new bad guy on the phone. 120 00:08:06,270 --> 00:08:10,290 Our first bank robber is rattled just enough, 121 00:08:10,290 --> 00:08:15,390 and as a control freak guy, he hasn't erupted in anger, 122 00:08:15,390 --> 00:08:18,060 but he's smart enough to know that he's out of control. 123 00:08:18,060 --> 00:08:20,940 And to this day, I don't know exactly why they handed 124 00:08:20,940 --> 00:08:23,670 the phone off, but he has handed the phone off 125 00:08:23,670 --> 00:08:27,230 to his only other colleague on the inside, 126 00:08:27,230 --> 00:08:30,490 his cohort, his fellow bad guy. 127 00:08:30,490 --> 00:08:34,240 And his fellow bank robber, who actually 128 00:08:34,240 --> 00:08:36,940 didn't expect to be robbing a bank today, 129 00:08:36,940 --> 00:08:39,520 he went out thinking they were going to burglarize a cash 130 00:08:39,520 --> 00:08:41,350 machine, suddenly he found himself 131 00:08:41,350 --> 00:08:43,440 in the middle of a bank robbery with hostages 132 00:08:43,440 --> 00:08:45,890 when he thought they were just going to steal some money. 133 00:08:45,892 --> 00:08:47,352 And they find themselves surrounded 134 00:08:47,350 --> 00:08:51,600 by the seventh largest standing army in the world, the NYPD. 135 00:08:51,600 --> 00:08:53,530 And this guy's got a genuine concern 136 00:08:53,530 --> 00:08:55,080 about getting out of here alive. 137 00:08:55,080 --> 00:08:56,680 But he's got a whole different set of concerns, 138 00:08:56,680 --> 00:08:58,850 and it's up to me to hear what he's actually saying. 139 00:11:33,210 --> 00:11:35,780 Here's the guy begging to make a deal. 140 00:11:35,780 --> 00:11:37,560 Now, I'm trying to label him as much as I 141 00:11:37,560 --> 00:11:39,210 can as we're going on here. 142 00:11:39,210 --> 00:11:43,950 I'm not hitting the labels in the exact form, and I'm still-- 143 00:11:43,953 --> 00:11:45,623 this is still early enough in my career, 144 00:11:45,620 --> 00:11:47,820 I'm still a little yes-addicted, this 145 00:11:47,820 --> 00:11:49,960 is very frustrating, isn't it? 146 00:11:49,960 --> 00:11:51,420 But he doesn't know how to get out. 147 00:11:51,420 --> 00:11:52,550 It's a legitimate question. 148 00:11:52,545 --> 00:11:54,275 How do I get out of this? 149 00:11:54,270 --> 00:11:57,370 He wants to show that he hasn't hurt anybody. 150 00:13:22,092 --> 00:13:23,432 Boom. 151 00:13:23,430 --> 00:13:25,430 He just agreed to come out. 152 00:13:25,430 --> 00:13:28,460 So we go into a bit of a scramble at this point in time 153 00:13:28,460 --> 00:13:33,980 because, by and large, face to face surrenders are dangerous. 154 00:13:33,980 --> 00:13:36,860 When I got on the phone as a second negotiator, 155 00:13:36,860 --> 00:13:40,600 we'd already been stalemated for about five hours. 156 00:13:40,600 --> 00:13:44,180 Once I take another approach, some tact 157 00:13:44,180 --> 00:13:46,060 is given to me by my colleagues-- 158 00:13:46,060 --> 00:13:48,850 downward inflecting voice, controlling 159 00:13:48,850 --> 00:13:51,970 the end in a positive way, and genuinely 160 00:13:51,970 --> 00:13:53,740 understanding the other side. 161 00:13:53,740 --> 00:13:56,530 We've got a surrender about 90 minutes later. 162 00:13:56,530 --> 00:13:59,050 These sorts of approaches, the willingness 163 00:13:59,050 --> 00:14:01,300 to make mistakes but have an overall approach that you 164 00:14:01,300 --> 00:14:04,870 know is sound gets you to the outcome as soon as possible. 165 00:14:04,870 --> 00:14:07,330 So ultimately, how does this all get resolved? 166 00:14:07,330 --> 00:14:08,810 I get the second bank robber out. 167 00:14:08,813 --> 00:14:10,483 He comes out, tells us everything that's 168 00:14:10,480 --> 00:14:12,280 going on inside the bank. 169 00:14:12,280 --> 00:14:15,070 Our control freak negotiator is still inside. 170 00:14:15,070 --> 00:14:17,650 He's determined not to do what we want, but also doesn't want 171 00:14:17,650 --> 00:14:19,210 to get into any more trouble. 172 00:14:19,210 --> 00:14:21,850 So our next negotiator comes on the phone, starts talking 173 00:14:21,850 --> 00:14:24,070 about getting him to surrender. 174 00:14:24,070 --> 00:14:26,860 Eventually, he starts releasing hostages. 175 00:14:26,860 --> 00:14:28,360 We finally get down to it's just him 176 00:14:28,360 --> 00:14:30,430 and one other hostage on the inside. 177 00:14:30,430 --> 00:14:32,340 And since he's determined to not give us 178 00:14:32,340 --> 00:14:34,840 what we want while we're trying to get the last hostage out, 179 00:14:34,840 --> 00:14:37,290 he volunteers to come out. 180 00:14:37,290 --> 00:14:40,380 This was long enough ago that by this point in time, 181 00:14:40,380 --> 00:14:43,300 he's had the opportunity to serve his time in jail. 182 00:14:43,300 --> 00:14:45,150 I have no idea what's happened to him. 183 00:14:45,150 --> 00:14:47,910 I do know that they found all the money in the walls 184 00:14:47,910 --> 00:14:49,620 and he didn't get any of it. 185 00:14:49,620 --> 00:14:54,560 And our bank robber was, in fact, Chris Watts. 186 00:14:54,564 --> 00:14:57,904 [MUSIC PLAYING] 187 00:15:00,290 --> 00:15:03,620 One of the key factors in the Chase Manhattan Bank robbery 188 00:15:03,620 --> 00:15:06,260 hostage-taking was the use of pronouns 189 00:15:06,260 --> 00:15:08,810 by our first hostage-taker. 190 00:15:08,810 --> 00:15:12,430 He wanted to use plural pronouns all the time. 191 00:15:12,430 --> 00:15:16,390 He was always talking about we, they, and them, us. 192 00:15:16,390 --> 00:15:20,660 He made it seem like he didn't have any power. 193 00:15:20,660 --> 00:15:23,480 That was intentional on his part because he was the decision 194 00:15:23,480 --> 00:15:24,110 maker. 195 00:15:24,113 --> 00:15:26,033 And he didn't want to be backed into a corner. 196 00:15:26,030 --> 00:15:28,240 And if he were to admit that he had as much influence 197 00:15:28,238 --> 00:15:31,428 as he did, then we could try to force him into a deal. 198 00:15:31,430 --> 00:15:34,400 And he knew that, so he kept putting responsibility 199 00:15:34,400 --> 00:15:37,040 for what was going on on they and them 200 00:15:37,040 --> 00:15:39,110 and the other guys and how dangerous they were. 201 00:15:39,110 --> 00:15:41,750 We see that a lot in the business world 202 00:15:41,750 --> 00:15:45,150 among shrewd, powerful negotiators. 203 00:15:45,150 --> 00:15:46,910 If somebody is at the negotiating table 204 00:15:46,910 --> 00:15:49,340 and they keep talking about their board and the rest 205 00:15:49,340 --> 00:15:53,030 of their team and they even say they're not the decision maker, 206 00:15:53,030 --> 00:15:56,240 they're important, they're hiding that from us. 207 00:15:56,240 --> 00:15:58,910 Conversely, the person who's at the table and he's 208 00:15:58,910 --> 00:16:01,040 in love with singular pronouns-- 209 00:16:01,040 --> 00:16:05,090 I, me, my-- that's the only time they get to use those words. 210 00:16:05,090 --> 00:16:06,500 They don't get to use those words 211 00:16:06,500 --> 00:16:09,840 when they're back in the office because nobody listens to them. 212 00:16:09,840 --> 00:16:11,870 So if they're in love with singular pronouns-- 213 00:16:11,870 --> 00:16:13,220 I, me, and my-- 214 00:16:13,220 --> 00:16:16,750 they're not that influential on their side of the table.