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Learning to deal with kidnapping
By Raymond Zhou (China Daily)
Updated: 2004-10-21 08:50
The crime scene: a supermarket. The victim: a pregnant woman. The offender: a
young man holding a sharp knife to her neck.
A young hostage is
carried off the crime scene by policemen after his kidnapper was shot by
police in Shijiazhuang, Hebei Province on August 17. Two hostage were
rescued unhurt. [Heibei Daily] | Soon the place was surrounded by more than 200 police officers and dozens of
police vehicles. A big crowd of spectators had gathered. A few minutes later a
petite young woman emerged. She was wearing a pretty skirt and looked nothing
like the crisis negotiator that she was.
She slowly approached the kidnapper, her gaze always on him, but full of
understanding.
"Hi, I'm here to help you. I have no bad intentions. I know you're doing this
out of helplessness. Would you please calm down?
"Whatever is in your mind, please tell me about it. I'll do the best I can.
It's not easy for our parents to bring us up. All of us can get headaches now
and then. But we're not just living for ourselves. If something happens to us,
our parents would be heartbroken."
A plastic pistol is
used by a kidnapper in Wuhan, Hubei Province, in March, when the man took
his wife's hostage and demanded his wife not to divorce with him.
[newsphoto] | The talk lasted an hour. Onlookers were getting fretful. Then the kidnapper
demanded his ransom: 3 million yuan (US$36,300) plus a getaway car.
The female negotiator nodded: "Take it easy. We'll meet your needs. Can you
tell me what kind of car you want? And 3 million yuan, too, right?"
As time went on, the kidnapper became more agitated. Before he made any
abrupt move, the negotiator said: "I know how much anguish you're in. But isn't
the lady you're holding also in pain? Think of her unborn baby, who is totally
innocent. We've been nice to you. Couldn't you be a little nicer to her and the
baby in her womb?"
A flicker of hesitation. But he quickly reverted to: "No way. Why should I
care about them? Give me the money and the car! Quick!"
But he was wavering, and as he wavered, the knife withdrew a little from the
victim's throat.
The negotiator used hand gestures to calm him down. "Look at the pregnant
lady. Hasn't she suffered enough? You don't mind her sitting down, do you?"
As he acquiesced, the negotiator reached out to the pregnant woman and helped
her, saying to the kidnapper at the same time: "Thank you. You're kind at heart.
Why do things have to be like this? Why can't we talk? Everything can be
discussed."
There was a scuffle, she separated the hostage from the knife and waiting
policemen sprang in to hold him down.
Birth of the crisis negotiator
China is seeing a surge in hostage crises. The Guangzhou-based Southern
Metropolis Daily reports that there have been more than 20 reported cases in the
past year. Things have exacerbated in the past two months, with almost weekly
stories of armed kidnapping.
What we have related above wasn't one of them. It was a dress rehearsal for a
hostage negotiation.
In the Beijing suburb of Changping, a seminar was held over the summer to
train people in negotiation techniques for these situations. More than 50 of the
best policemen and women, recruited from all over the city, went through
extensive tests in psychology. Only 17 were selected. They were to be China's
first batch of hostage negotiators.
Three months of lectures, case analyses, demonstrations and run-throughs led
to consensus that talking it out is often the best way out for a hostage
stand-off.
The highest principle for negotiation is to guarantee the life and safety of
the hostage, said Professor Gao Feng, who added that it is not commendable to
use violence against violence. In a society governed by law and human rights,
even the life of the criminal suspect should not be taken away lightly before
there is a court verdict. Shooting the kidnapper should be the last solution,
said the professor of Beijing Police Academy, who was the first Chinese expert
to study the handling of such negotiations.
Doing so may also leave a psychological scar on the hostage. It may even by
mistake hurt the wrong target. On July 2, a police sniper tried to shoot a
kidnapper in a Yinchuan restaurant in Northwest China. Sadly he hit the hostage
instead.
Traditionally, killing the kidnapper, whatever the cost, was considered the
ultimate victory. But the only international standard for evaluating such crisis
intervention is whether the life of the hostage is saved when the dust settles,
Gao said.
The point was hit home in a case on July 7, around the same time as the story
of the negotiator training programme was making its rounds in the nation's
media.
On that fateful morning, Chen Haoran, a 23-year-old peasant, forced his way
into a red Volkswagen Bora. The driver was a young mother named Guo, who had
just dropped off her daughter at a kindergarten in Changchun, capital of
Northeast China's Jilin Province. Brandishing a knife, Chen asked for a ransom
of 100,000 yuan (US$12,000).
Before they could drive off from the crowded street, the car was quickly
surrounded by hundreds of policemen and thousands of spectators. After three
hours' stalemate, police fired four shots, within 10 seconds of one another,
killing Chen. But Guo had been stabbed seven times. She died on the way to the
hospital.
The public, as well as the victim's family, questioned the wisdom of the
police action: Why did negotiation fail? Why did police wait to shoot until the
hostage had already been harmed? Why was there a 10-second lapse between the
first and the last shots?
The police, on their part, defended their decision: They had tried their best
to meet the demands of the kidnapper, even offering to exchange the hostage for
one of the policemen. The kidnapper and the hostage were very close, and it was
hard to see clearly from outside the car. "We would have kept on talking to him
if he had not harmed the hostage," said Tang Qinghua, deputy director of
Changchun Public Security Bureau.
A reporter from CCTV asked if there were any professional negotiators in
Changchun.
"All the principal officials from our bureau were on the spot. If I cannot be
counted as an expert, surely the other bureau chiefs can," Tang said.
Qualities of a negotiator
Therein lies the rub.
Tang and his colleagues might be the best qualified in that city to have
conducted the negotiation, but they were not professionally trained.
A well-trained negotiator has a success rate of 80 per cent, Professor Gao
said. But the current success rate in China is less than 50 per cent, and even
that is achieved mostly by chance. He blamed failures like Changchun on a lack
of negotiation skills.
As many police chiefs showed up on the scene, the danger of chaos lurked
because a clear reporting and responsibility system was not up and running, said
Hao Hongkui, associate professor at the Beijing-based China People's Public
Security University.
A negotiating team usually consists of three people: a team leader who
co-ordinates everything, a chief negotiator who does all the talking, and an
assistant who records all the details of the scene and can take over if the
chief negotiator has to be replaced.
The frequent change of negotiators in the Changchun incident was a big
mistake. The negotiator has to establish a rapport with the kidnapper, to get on
the same wavelength with him so that there can be a more meaningful
communication. Unless absolutely necessary, one person should carry the
negotiation to the end.
As it is, the pool of negotiators is made up of police, but not all good
policemen can be good negotiators. The prerequisites for a good negotiator,
according to Gao Feng, include a wealth of legal knowledge and a storehouse of
miscellaneous information. He or she must be extremely sharp, observant and
expressive, have quick reflexes and rely mostly on gut feelings. On top of that,
he or she must be able to act well enough to show their emotions with verbal and
body language.
It all comes down to the moment when the kidnapper asks "Is it too late to
lay down my arms?" and that's the first sign of success for the negotiator, said
Gao.
Wang from Tongzhou Police Bureau, one of the 17 trainees in the programme,
was learning to modulate his voice and control the pace of his conversation
during one of the practices. Set in a beauty salon, he pretended to be the owner
and uncle of the hostage. When the kidnapper demanded 80 million yuan (US$9.6
million), he quipped: "Brother, if I had 80 million, I wouldn't be in this
business. I'd be in real estate and driving a Mercedes."
The kidnapper burst into a chuckle and the tension was slightly defused.
Wang, who would not reveal his real name because of the nature of his work,
said he must have the upper hand. "If my opponent's brain is running at 1,000
rotations, mine must run at 3,000 to outsmart him."
The immediate priority of a negotiator is to dissipate tension. The kidnapper
tends to be in an extremely unstable, emotional state and may abruptly resort to
violence. But rarely is his ultimate intention to harm the hostage. That gives
the negotiator room to manipulate the situation and put the kidnapper at ease.
A professional negotiator cannot guarantee success, but he or she would not
make such blunders as speaking in a condescending or commanding voice, and
neither will there be dramatic ultimata like "I'll give you 10 minutes or..."
Value of life
The shift of emphasis, from killing the kidnapper to saving the hostage, can
only happen at a time when there is a public awakening to the value of human
rights. But it also puts the police in a riskier position.
"When a shot is fired, the first cop who rushes in has the job to protect the
hostage. It is the second cop's responsibility to contain the kidnapper," said
Wang.
The seminar was very clear in listing priorities: first rescue the hostage,
then protect the police, and finally minimize harm to the criminal.
Wang said this deviates from practice in Western countries. "The West places
the lives of the negotiators and cops at the forefront to reduce unnecessary
human loss, so negotiations are often conducted by telephone or at a safe
distance, but we have vowed to put the lives of the public before our own," said
Wang. He said close-range negotiations were much more effective in breaking down
the kidnappers' mental barriers.
If this sounds like taking the moral high ground, calls for restraint from
unnecessarily killing the hostage taker have elicited some negative reaction. Xi
Wei, a Beijing policeman, complained in the Beijing News about what he perceived
as the overemphasis on the rights of the kidnapper: One is destroying public
safety and does not even respect his own life, and the other is risking his life
to protect this safety. Is the life of the former more valuable than that of the
latter?
"Actually nobody is advocating a total ban of using lethal force against
kidnappers. It's just that it should be used with more caution. He may have
broken the law, but he should be brought to justice in a court of law. What he
thinks and says at that time may well be a lesson and a deterrent for people
with similar inclinations. If we kill him on the spot, it will not be a total
victory for our rescue efforts," said Wang.
The risk to the negotiator, said Professor Gao, is fairly low, with the
worldwide figure for attacks on negotiators at 3.6 per cent. Yet dynamics at a
hostage scene can change so fast that a slight miscalculation may end up with
the tragic loss of the lives of the hostage or the cop-cum-negotiator.
Next year the 17 Beijing negotiators will go through another round of
training and some will be sent overseas to hone their skills. In addition,
Professor Mei Jianming of China People's Public Security University has invited
experts from the US Federal Investigation Bureau for exchanges and lectures.
Many of the teachers and trainees in the current programme have also been sent
to Chengdu, Shanghai and Guangzhou to get more hands-on experience and put
theory into practice.
"We are only just starting, and have a lot to learn. We need more cases for
analysis. We'll take it one step at a time," said Gao Feng.
Hostage-taking wave has roots in poverty
The wave of kidnapping and hostage taking incidents has sent shockwaves
around the nation. The frequency of the cases is unprecedented and they are fast
turning into one of the biggest public threats in peacetime, said Professor Gao
Feng of Beijing Police Academy.
In the past, such cases were mostly gang-related, the result of organized
crime. But today they are mainly the product of desperate individuals who are
out for a quick buck.
Some of those who used to steal and mug have got so impatient that they have
now resorted to taking hostages, claimed Zhao Enbo, professor of Jilin Justice
and Police Academy. "It has something to do with the get-rich-quick mentality of
our society."
Each anti-corruption story seems to involve a more astronomical figure of
bribery or embezzled fund. Businessmen dabble in forgery to make their first pot
of gold. In this atmosphere, even pickpocketing has lost its recklessness.
Kidnappers are now asking for millions or tens of millions in ransom money.
Sometimes they are armed just with a penknife.
Many kidnappers are rural labourers who try to overcome poverty by seeking
jobs in the city. Instead they become victimized by exploitation, cheating or
are spurred by a heavy dose of jealousy. Their targets tend to be urban
residents with cars, businesses or those who frequent luxury hangouts.
Sun Zhe definitely belongs to the wealthy class. Besides receiving the salary
of a senior executive in a profitable line of work as the president of Changchun
Diabetes Hospital in North China's Jilin Province, also earns upward of 1
million yuan a year from royalties from a drug he invented.
When he got out of his Audi and strode into the city's five-star Noble Hotel
on a summer day in 2000, he was carrying 10,000 yuan (US$1,200) in cash, a sum
he prepared for dining out with a friend from Beijing.
In the elevator, he was taken hostage by 21-year-old Wang Taosheng. "Give me
your money!" Wang threatened, wielding a dagger.
After handing over the stash of cash, Sun said: "My friend, I can see that
you're not the kind of person who does this. You must have encountered some
difficulty and you have no other options. If you don't harm me, maybe I can help
you."
Wang dropped his dagger. Sun took him to the hotel cafe and ordered two cups
of tea, thus starting a long conversation.
Wang came from the countryside. His mother was suffering from a heart ailment
and needed to pay a big medical bill, and his father had a chronic disease.
Early that year, Wang came to Changchun and got a job at a construction site.
After six months and 10 days of back-breaking work, he was told that the boss
had disappeared without leaving him a single penny in pay.
He got another job. Come pay day, the boss said his wife's cellphone was
stolen and he suspected the workers did it. So he subtracted 300 yuan (US$36)
from everyone's paycheck. That left Wang with only 200 yuan (US$24) for the
month, hardly enough to feed himself.
"I was burned twice, so I felt all the world was against me," he said.
With both parents desperate for medical treatment and memories of all the
injustices he had encountered, he decided to turn to crime and try his luck at
the posh hotel. "I've never done anything illegal in my life, but where on earth
can I get the money my parents need?"
After hearing Wang's story, Sun decided not to press charges. Instead he gave
the youth 6,000 yuan (US$725) in aid and became his friend.
Wang paid his parents' medical bill and used the remaining fund to open a
tofu mill. Sun helped him with his sales by tapping his connections. Now every
morning before 8 am Wang delivers tofu to six factories and two hospitals.
"Hostage holdups are not only a crime issue, it is a broader social issue.
Therefore, not only should the police think about it, but the whole society
needs to reflect on it," said Sun.
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