SWAT Unit 2: Crisis and Barricade: Negotiation First

School: Minister Destiny Testimony Schools Track: Law Enforcement — Professional Training Wing: SWAT Unit: 2 of 4 (self-paced) Tier: Public — open to all students Founded and presented by: Muslim Ordained Minister Destiny Marie Morgan

A note on what this school is: this is community-designed training, built from public sources and from lived experience in the neighborhoods being policed. It is not agency policy and does not replace your department's training, general orders, or the law. Where this program proposes new approaches, they are taught and labeled as proposals. Nothing here is legal advice. This track teaches law, ethics, and decision-making only — it contains no tactical instruction of any kind. Rank in this school is a school achievement only — not a job rank, title, or credential. This unit is compiled from public sources; it is not classified material, and this school holds no security-clearance content.

Before you start

• This school never collects your name. Progress and quiz answers stay on your device; pass the unit quiz (80% or higher, retakes allowed, answers are not shown) and your certificate downloads with a blank name line to fill in after saving.
• Unit 1 established the tactical team's narrow mission. This unit teaches what usually accomplishes that mission: a conversation. In the published literature of crisis negotiation — much of it written by negotiators themselves — most incidents that end well end with a person deciding to come out, and that decision is built, slowly, out of listening. This unit teaches communication only: how time works, how listening works, how trust is earned in the right order, and how the people around the negotiator support the conversation. It contains nothing about how anyone is positioned, equipped, or moved — by design.

The lesson

1. The first principle: the designed outcome is a surrender, not a victory

Crisis negotiation begins from a redefinition of success. In a barricade or hostage incident, the outcome the entire response is designed to produce is a voluntary, peaceful surrender: the person inside walks out, unharmed, and everyone — the subject, any hostages, the neighbors, the responders — goes home alive. Everything else in this unit is engineering in service of that single design goal.

That framing changes how professionals talk about these incidents. A negotiation that takes six hours and ends with a man in handcuffs crying on the curb is not a slow success; it is the textbook success, the one the system was built to produce. Conversely, a fast ending is not automatically a good one. Speed is a value in exactly one circumstance — when someone is being actively harmed or is in immediate medical peril — and outside that circumstance, urgency is usually the enemy wearing the costume of decisiveness. Commanders, negotiators, and tactical leaders who share this definition of success can support each other across a long incident. Teams that secretly hold different definitions — one part measuring success in hours, another in outcomes — pull against each other at the worst moments.

Public negotiation literature also makes a point that reframes the work: the large majority of crisis incidents are not hostage-takings with calculated demands. They are people in acute emotional crisis — after a loss, a humiliation, a mental-health collapse, an intoxicated spiral — who, as published FBI negotiator accounts put it, often do not know what they want. A person who does not know what he wants cannot be bargained with in the ordinary sense. He can only be listened back to himself. That is why this discipline is built on listening rather than deal-making, and why its foundational model, taught in Section 3, is a stairway of relationship rather than a table of trades.

2. Time as a tool — what the hours are actually doing

"Time is on our side" is the oldest saying in crisis negotiation, and it is widely misunderstood as a reason to wait passively. In the published literature, time is an active tool — the medium in which several predictable processes work in the responders' favor:

• Physiology settles. The adrenaline and intoxication that fuel the first hour of a crisis fade on a biological schedule. A person who could not hear a sentence at minute ten can often hold a conversation at hour two, without anyone having persuaded him of anything.
• Hunger, fatigue, and discomfort accumulate. These are not pressure tactics in this school's teaching; they are the ordinary facts of a long incident that quietly raise the attractiveness of a safe way out being described calmly by a voice the subject has come to trust.
• Relationships form. Trust cannot be rushed, and it is the currency the whole resolution is purchased with. Every kept micro-promise — "I'll call your sister and tell her you're okay, and I'll call you back in ten minutes to confirm I did" — is a deposit.
• Information improves. While the conversation proceeds, responders learn who the subject is: his history, his health, who he trusts, what set this off, what a face-saving exit looks like to him. Early action is taken in ignorance; later decisions are made with knowledge.
• The subject rehearses surrender. People rarely leap from defiance to walking out. They approach it in language first — "what would even happen if I came out?" — and each rehearsal makes the act itself more imaginable and less frightening.

The professional discipline is to protect time from erosion. Deadlines invented for convenience, shift-change impatience, media pressure, and the understandable itch to "do something" all spend the incident's most valuable resource. The commander's role — taught here as a communication decision, not a tactical one — is to keep asking one question: is anyone safer if this ends in the next ten minutes than if the conversation continues? When the honest answer is no, the answer is to let the negotiators work.

3. The Behavioral Change Stairway — influence is earned, in order

The best-known framework in published crisis-negotiation literature is the Behavioral Change Stairway Model, developed by the FBI's Crisis Negotiation Unit and described in a widely cited 2005 review by Vecchi, Van Hasselt, and Romano. It pictures the negotiator climbing five stairs, in order, each one resting on the ones below:

1. Active listening. The negotiator demonstrates, skillfully and continuously, that the subject is being heard.
2. Empathy. The negotiator comes to understand — and communicates understanding of — the subject's feelings and perspective, without endorsing harmful behavior.
3. Rapport. The subject begins to experience the negotiator as trustworthy; the relationship becomes two-way.
4. Influence. Only now, with trust established, can the negotiator's suggestions carry weight.
5. Behavioral change. The subject acts — accepts the way out, releases others, comes out peacefully.

The model's hard teaching is the order. Influence attempted before rapport reads to a frightened person as manipulation, and manipulation discovered destroys the one asset the resolution depends on. This is why experienced negotiators are suspicious of cleverness. There is no sentence, however brilliant, that skips the stairs; there is only the patient accumulation of evidence, in the subject's own experience, that this voice tells the truth, keeps its word, and is not going anywhere.

Notice, too, what the stairway says about who changes. The first three stairs are work the negotiator does, not demands the subject must meet. The model places the burden of the early incident on the trained professional's discipline — which is exactly where this school believes it belongs.

4. Active listening — the actual skills, as published

Active listening is not a synonym for "being quiet while he talks." In the published literature it is a defined skill set, taught to negotiators and — notably for this school's students — identical in structure to the skills taught to counselors. The 2005 review describes core skills including:

• Mirroring — repeating the last few words, or the gist, of what the subject just said. It signals attention and invites the subject to keep going and to hear his own words.
• Paraphrasing — restating the subject's meaning in the negotiator's own words, for the subject to confirm or correct. Correction is progress: he is now working with the negotiator on an accurate account of his own feelings.
• Emotional labeling — naming the feeling underneath the words: "It sounds like you feel betrayed — like nobody listened until it came to this." A feeling named accurately loses some of its pressure; a feeling named wrongly still invites useful correction.
• Summarizing — periodically gathering the whole account: what happened, what he feels, what he says he needs. Summaries prove listening across time, not just across a sentence.
• Minimal encouragers and effective pauses — the brief "uh-huh," "go on," and the disciplined silence that lets a subject fill the space with the thing he actually needed to say.
• Open-ended questions — questions that cannot be answered yes or no, which hand the subject the floor instead of marching him down a checklist.
• "I" statements — the negotiator speaking for himself ("I'm worried that if this goes on much longer, you'll be too exhausted to make good decisions") rather than issuing blame in "you" statements that a cornered person hears as attack.

Two guardrails from the same literature deserve emphasis. First, the negotiator does not lie — about consequences, about what can be delivered, about who is present. A single discovered lie can collapse hours of rapport, and the subject will test promises; every promise made must be a promise kept, which is why negotiators promise small and deliver exactly. Second, the negotiator does not bargain away things that are not his to trade — charges, sentences, other people's decisions — and says so honestly, pivoting to what can be truthfully offered: safety, medical care, being heard, a dignified exit, and a voice in how the surrender happens.

5. The team around the voice — roles that protect the conversation

Published descriptions of crisis negotiation teams — including the NTOA's public work on crisis negotiation team policy, which in 2026 addressed integrating behavioral health advisors into team standards — describe a small structure of roles, all in service of the one conversation:

• The primary negotiator is the voice. He or she speaks with the subject and, as far as possible, does nothing else. The exclusivity matters: the subject is building a relationship with a person, and the person must be fully present.
• The secondary negotiator (coach) listens alongside, unburdened by speaking: tracking the stairway — are we still at empathy, or is rapport really there? — catching details the primary missed, suggesting phrasing, watching the primary's fatigue and frustration, and ready to step in seamlessly if relief is needed.
• The team leader coordinates the negotiation effort, keeps the flow of verified information to the negotiator, shields the team from rumor and pressure, and serves as the honest broker between the negotiation and the incident command — including delivering unwelcome news in both directions: to command, that the conversation needs more time; to the negotiators, that conditions have changed.
• A mental-health professional or behavioral health advisor, where the agency's model includes one, advises on what may be driving the subject's behavior and how language lands — supporting the negotiators, not diagnosing at a distance or directing the incident.
• Intelligence and support roles gather and verify background — who the subject is, who matters to him, what has been tried — and manage the practical arrangements (a family member who may help, medical standby) that a peaceful ending requires.

What unifies these roles is subordination to a single principle: everything the team does is either building the stairway or protecting the conditions — time, calm, truthfulness — that the stairway needs. A team that understands itself this way also understands the tactical team's role during negotiation in the same terms this school has taught from Unit 1: presence that contains the incident and keeps everyone safe while the conversation works — a supporting role in the designed outcome, which is a person choosing to walk out.

When surrender comes, the published guidance treats it as part of the negotiation, not an afterthought: the exit is talked through in advance, in concrete, calm detail — what the subject will see, who will speak to him, what will happen step by step, what will not happen — so the most frightening moment of his day contains no surprises. He is met, as promised, with the dignity described. Every kept detail is a down payment on the next incident, in a community that will hear how this one ended.

Words to know — SWAT Unit 2

• Crisis negotiation — the disciplined use of communication to resolve barricade, hostage, and crisis incidents peacefully, as a trained team practice.
• Barricade incident — an incident in which a person has shut himself inside a place and refuses to come out, creating danger or the risk of it.
• Behavioral Change Stairway — the FBI-developed model, described in published literature, in which a negotiator proceeds in order through active listening, empathy, rapport, and influence to behavioral change.
• Active listening — a defined set of communication skills — including mirroring, paraphrasing, emotional labeling, and summarizing — that demonstrate a subject is being heard.
• Empathy — understanding and communicating the subject's feelings and perspective, without endorsing harmful behavior.
• Rapport — the two-way trust that develops when a subject experiences the negotiator as honest, patient, and reliable.
• Emotional labeling — naming the feeling underneath a subject's words, so it can be acknowledged and its pressure reduced.
• Primary negotiator — the team member who serves as the single voice speaking with the subject.
• Secondary negotiator — the coach who listens alongside the primary, tracks the conversation, and supports or relieves the primary.
• Voluntary surrender — the designed outcome of crisis negotiation: the subject comes out peacefully by his own decision.

Myths vs facts — SWAT Unit 2

• Myth: Negotiation is what you try briefly before the real response. Fact: In published negotiation literature, negotiation is the primary response for barricade and crisis incidents; other capabilities exist to keep everyone safe while the conversation works toward surrender.
• Myth: A skilled negotiator has a magic phrase that ends incidents. Fact: The Behavioral Change Stairway is sequential — influence only works after listening, empathy, and rapport have been built, and skipping steps undermines the outcome.
• Myth: Time passing means nothing is happening. Fact: Time actively works: agitation and intoxication fade, trust accumulates through kept promises, information improves, and the subject rehearses surrender in language before attempting it.
• Myth: To build rapport, a negotiator can promise whatever keeps the subject calm. Fact: Published practice is strict honesty — promises must be kept, and things outside the negotiator's authority are named as such; a discovered lie can destroy the relationship the resolution depends on.

Think it through — SWAT Unit 2

The situation: At 11 p.m., a man who lost custody of his daughter that morning has barricaded himself alone in his apartment. He is shouting that "the system" has taken everything, he has been drinking, and neighbors report he owns a hunting rifle, though none has been seen. He has not threatened any specific person and has answered the phone twice, hanging up both times after less than a minute. The shift commander, mindful of overtime and the hour, asks the negotiation team leader: "How long are we really going to give this?" You are that team leader. Walk it through.

Walk it through:

1. Start with the designed outcome. No one is being held, no one has been harmed, and the man is alone. The success this response is built to produce is the man walking out unharmed — and nothing in the facts sets a clock on that except other people's fatigue.
2. Read the stairway's position honestly. Two calls under a minute means the team is on the first stair: he has not yet experienced being listened to. His hanging up is not failure; it is the ordinary beginning with an intoxicated, grieving man. Influence — "come out now" — attempted at this stage is precisely the skipped step the model warns against.
3. Inventory what time is doing. His intoxication and adrenaline will fade. Negotiators are learning who he is — the custody loss today, what his daughter means to him, who he might trust. Each short call is also data: he keeps answering, which means some part of him is keeping the door open.
4. Answer the commander's real question with the professional one: "Is anyone safer if this ends in the next ten minutes than if the conversation continues?" On these facts, no. Give command a rhythm instead of a deadline — updates at intervals, what the stairway position is, what the team is working on — so patience is a managed plan, not a drift.
5. Prepare the ending he can imagine. Long before he is ready, the team should know what a dignified exit looks like to him: who he will see first, whether a family member's voice helps, what he is afraid will happen that the negotiator can truthfully address. When he finally asks "what would happen if I came out?" — the rehearsal question — the answer should already exist, calm and concrete.

Try this — SWAT Unit 2

Practice the first stair where the stakes are a conversation, not an incident:

• The ten-minute listening drill. With a partner, take ten minutes in which one person speaks about something that genuinely frustrates them. The listener may use only the published active-listening skills — mirroring, paraphrasing, emotional labeling, summarizing, minimal encouragers, open-ended questions — and may offer no advice, no solutions, and no "that reminds me of." Switch roles. Debrief: which skill was hardest to stay inside? When did the speaker first correct a paraphrase — and what did that correction tell you about rapport forming?
• The stairway audit. Take a publicly released account of a resolved barricade incident and mark where each stair appears — and any place where influence was attempted early, and what happened next.
• Write the honest promises list: five things a negotiator can always truthfully offer (for example: "I will call you back when I say I will"), and five things a negotiator may never promise because they belong to someone else.

Resources to keep — SWAT Unit 2

• 911 — for immediate danger, serious injury, or a medical emergency that cannot wait.
• 988 — call or text 988 for the Suicide and Crisis Lifeline — vital in crisis incidents, and a resource negotiators and families can be offered after an incident ends.
• Crisis Text Line — text HOME to 741741 to connect with a live, trained crisis counselor by text.
• SAMHSA National Helpline — 1-800-662-4357 — free, confidential treatment referral and information for substance use and mental-health concerns; relevant follow-up for subjects and families after crisis incidents.
• National Domestic Violence Hotline — 1-800-799-7233 — many barricade incidents grow out of domestic crises; advocates can help the people around the subject, during and after.
• National Tactical Officers Association (NTOA) — https://ntoa.org/ — public pages include the association's work on crisis negotiation team policy and standards.
• U.S. Department of Justice, COPS Office — https://cops.usdoj.gov/ — public publications on crisis response, de-escalation, and community trust.

Public sources — SWAT Unit 2

This unit is compiled from public sources, including: Vecchi, Van Hasselt, and Romano's published 2005 review of crisis and hostage negotiation, which presents the FBI Crisis Negotiation Unit's Behavioral Change Stairway Model and its active-listening skill set; published accounts by FBI crisis negotiators describing time, honesty, and voluntary surrender as the discipline's foundations; the National Tactical Officers Association's public pages and its public announcements on crisis negotiation team policy, including the integration of behavioral health advisors; and U.S. Department of Justice COPS Office public publications. No non-public, classified, or internal material is used anywhere in this track, and this unit contains communication content only.

What you earned / what's next — SWAT Unit 2

✅ Unit 2 complete (quiz score 80% or higher): You can state the designed outcome of a crisis incident, explain the active work time performs, climb the Behavioral Change Stairway in its correct order, name and use the published active-listening skills, hold the honesty guardrails, and describe the team roles that protect the one conversation on which a peaceful ending depends.

Your certificate

Minister Destiny Testimony Schools Minister Destiny Testimony Schools — Law Enforcement Certificate of Completion — SWAT Unit 2: Crisis and Barricade: Negotiation First

This certificate is presented by Muslim Ordained Minister Destiny Marie Morgan

Awarded to: ______________________________ (write your name here after you download — your name is never collected or stored by this school)

Date completed: ______________

Congratulations. You have studied the discipline that ends most crises: listening in the right order, telling the truth in small kept promises, and letting a frightened person borrow your calm until he can find his own. May every incident you touch end with a door opening and a person walking out alive. — Minister Destiny Marie Morgan

This is a certificate of educational completion from Minister Destiny Testimony Schools, a community-designed training program. It is not a state license, a POST certification, or an agency qualification, and this program is not agency policy.

What's next: Unit 3 — The Law of the High-Risk Call: Warrants, Exigency, and the Fourth Amendment

Minister Destiny Testimony Schools — Law Enforcement: Professional Training Wing. Community-designed educational training compiled from public sources; not agency policy, not a certification, and not legal advice.