Episode debriefing
Commentary by Dr. Edward O’Malley, a psychologist with an extensive background in conflict resolution, crisis management and hostage negotiation. His name has been changed for security and confidentiality purposes.
Whatever It Takes (season three, episode four) - Watch online at CTV.ca
Whatever It Takes brings us face-to-face with the results of high school sports program gone awry. Developing from what appears to be a garden variety assault, the plot unfolds to profile a high school basketball coach who uses physical intimidation delivered by fellow team members at his behest to enforce a “winning is everything” credo for his players. Underperforming is not an option.
The plot quickly splits into two related scenarios. In the first, Carleton, the original underperforming player, threatens to jump off his school’s roof rather than address the painful impact of what he has been experiencing. Only persistent, targeted, low key and well timed intervention by Parker saves the day.
In the second subplot, Corey, Carleton’s best friend who has been forced by his coach to betray Carleton, takes the coach hostage in an inaccessible part of the school and appears to be ready to do him considerable violence. In this case, forcible entry by Team One followed by wise words from Ed and others eventually settles matters.
This episode clearly demonstrates the basic underpinnings of a well oiled emergency response team. There is a time for force and a time for words, with the latter leading to the only outcome that really counts as a win.
Follow the Leader (Season three, episode three) - Watch online at CTV.ca
Follow The Leader shows what can happen when an unscrupulous leader with an evangelist’s verbal skills works his trade on a group of gullible young men fueled by adolescent angst. Victor, the leader, hates immigrants whom he blames for his own worthless life and recruits young men to deliver his hate in the form of home made explosive devices to locations frequented by new immigrants.
Two young men, Danny, and his younger brother Trent, are central characters in a situation that sees Victor, Trent and another young vigilante, replete with backpack bombs, escape an armed intervention by Team 1 after a tip-off by Danny, whose conscience kicks in once he realizes Victor’s true intentions. Two of the bomb carrying threesome are soon neutralized, leaving Trent, alone with a live bomb in his back pack, and only Sam’s negotiation skills inserted between capitulation and eternity. Sam uses all the arguments he can muster; self preservation, love of brother, or futility of the whole exercise to convince Trent to stand-down before the explosive timer celebrates Victor’s wrath. Thankfully, in the final seconds, Sam wins the day. It’s a good deployment for Team 1, notwithstanding the injuries to Parker and other team members that serve only to cement the strength of the Team.
Severed Ties (Season three, episode two) - Watch online at CTV.ca
Severed Ties demonstrates very clearly the two-sided nature of deep emotional attachment in creating and solving domestic-related kidnapping and hostage situations. Maggie, a recent prison graduate with an unfortunate background, kidnaps her two young children who were adopted by other families while she was incarcerated. Threatening violence to others who stand in her way, Maggie leads Team One on a cross-city escapade culminating in a drug store scenario where one of the children goes into allergic shock. The resolution to this situation is spearheaded by Greg who is able to arrange for medical aid for the child, and ultimately to convince Maggie to surrender. Greg accomplishes this by empathically sharing with Maggie his own unfortunate experiences with his dispossessed children, breaking through her frantic obsession to recoup her kids at all costs.
Domestic situations are the most dangerous and unpredictable of all the situations confronted by police because emotion does not usually dance well with reality. Happily, in this case, Greg was able to translate his own pain into a preferred outcome because he could show Maggie that life after loss is possible, albeit not easy.
You Think You Know Someone (Season two, episode 20) - Watch Online at CTV.ca
You Think You Know Someone puts a novel spin on a typical call-out for Team One. In this case, the hostage is Greg Parker. Greg's care and concern for Haley - the daughter of a criminal who was killed in Greg’s earlier life in Homicide - has put him in harm’s way from Haley’s rejected boyfriend and meth lab operator.
This episode is interesting from two perspectives. In the first case, Parker’s coolness in adapting to his unfamiliar role as a hostage is very evident. Quiet and reflective conversation with his buzzed-up perpetrators keeps a volatile situation from deteriorating more quickly than it might and extends Parker’s life line. In the second case, we see the discipline of Team One members in dealing with the rescue of one of their own. In such circumstances there is a natural propensity for hasty action over prudence, but Team One handles that
temptation about as well as one could expect.
This episode also gives us the opportunity to glimpse beyond the guns and guts personas of several of the Team One members, including Parker. Tough they are, but vulnerable as are we all!
The Good Citizen (Season two, ep. 21) - Watch online now at CTV.ca
The Good Citizen demonstrates the reality that, given enough pressure, any of us are capable of bizarre life threatening behaviors that could put us clearly in the crosshairs of a Team 1. In this case, a “good citizen”, Robert Cooper, troubled by his life crashing all around him, reaches the breaking point when his brother fatally overdoses on illegal drugs. Coming face-to-face with the drug dealers he deems responsible for his brother’s demise, Cooper reverts to the kind of violence more characteristic of drug bosses than of a good citizen.
Ultimately, we see Cooper, having severely injured street-level members of the drug trade, leveraging his victim’s knowledge to carry his vengeance to the top levels of the trade, threatening “eye for an eye” justice. Although their initial sentiment may lie more with Cooper than with his drug czar victims, Team 1 holds the day, primarily due to the calmness and skill of Wordy who uses his childhood affiliation with the neighborhood to talk Cooper down from a life-threatening conclusion. We see Team 1 doing very well what tactical teams are trained to do, use the subtle threat of force to hold a situation static so that skillful negotiation, the real “golden bullet”, can do its job. A very good job indeed!
Unconditional Love (Season three, episode one) - Watch online on CTV.ca
Unconditional Love portrays the most unlikely of hostage situations, a sequential escapade where a hostage from the first incident ends up as a hostage-taker in the second! The first incident involves a criminal trying to elude capture who carjacks a auto complete with baby and eventually holes up at a motel, seemingly taking as hostage a resident of that hotel. As it turns out, Paul, the hotel hostage, is really a distraught youth who was looking to buy a gun from the original hostage-taker to create his own mayhem. However, Paul takes personal risk to free the baby from the carjack before incapacitating his hostage-taker and escaping in a rather elaborate sojourn through the sewers. Paul then takes as hostage a girl at a skating rink as Team One catches up with him.
Parker handles this negotiation and does a fine job. Using police intelligence that correctly profiles Paul with autistic traits, Parker is successful in getting inside Paul’s head using sympathetic words and actions that earn his trust and eventually resolves the situation. This incident demonstrates the key role of basic police work in profiling a hostage-taker so as to allow the most effective approach to negotiating. This is particularly important in dealing with an individual who has serious psychological issues where handing matters the wrong way might be disastrous.
Quite a day. Score a double hitter for Team One.
Behind the Blue Line (Season two, ep. 22) - Watch online at CTV.ca
Behind the Blue Line is a complex episode that demonstrates the frailty of the human condition, no matter which side of the police-perpetrator dichotomy you focus on. Whatb initially seems like a situation of domestic terrorism evolves quickly into a situation of psychological meltdown as an ex-soldier suffering from post traumatic stress disorder holesup and seeks to protect the one place in his life associated with hope, an aging hockey arena slotted for tear-down.
What makes this episode particularly interesting is when Sam (Wordy) establishes contact with the perpetrator (Darren) and scores points by using the similarities in his own life and that of the perpetrator to establish a relationship, hoping to end the situation peacefully.
Initially, Sam’s good intentions appear to bear fruit but we are soon faced with an ugly truth. Darren’s chosen resolution is suicide by cop. This episode points out a key aspect of successful negotiation, the need for a negotiator to be in control of himself if he is to be in control of a tense situation. Sam loses that professional detachment as he surrenders his objectivity to his own demons, taking an unacceptable personal risk and putting the entire team in jeopardy. Stay with the team or leave, this is not a day that Sam is soon to forget!
Just a Man: (Season two, ep. 16) - Watch online at CTV.ca
Just A Man shows a completely different perspective on the role of a special team and that of a negotiator. In this episode we see a jail riot targeted at destroying a rival prison gang, but there is a twist. One prisoner, Anton, not part of any prison gang, has just been turned down for parole and two family members of the man he killed years ago are still in the prison at the start of the riot after speaking out against Anton at his hearing. Anton pretends to want to kill the two later as a means to stall their immediate demise by other prisoners in the riot.
Negotiating in a situation such as this is very different from the more typical domestic incident. The process is less one of talking down an individual perpetrator and more one of trying to delay or deflect violent actions by the prisoners while tactical officers can plan what may be a very messy intervention. But there is another twist in this episode, one that in real situations might not be allowed. Eddie wants to handle the negotiation because he was once close to Anton’s family. It’s a big risk to use a negotiator who brings along such baggage, even when the negotiator believes that the effect will be positive. Happily, it works out in this episode as Anton shows himself worthy of Eddie’s trust and ultimately saves the hostages.
Team One will undoubtedly talk about this matter when they hold their post-incident debriefing. Notwithstanding the positive outcome in this case, I wonder if they will feel the same about Eddie’s decision in the cold light of day?
Coming to You Live: (Season 2, ep. 18) - Watch online at CTV.ca
Coming to You Live is reality radio on steroids, fueled by the two most dangerous elements in hostage situations, alcohol and emotional frailty stretched to the breaking point. Pat Cosgrove, a textbook example of a hostage taker, a loner, male, friendless and selfabsorbed, is about to lose the one thing he has left, his radio talk show. Compounding that stark reality is the guilt he feels from being the absent father for a dead son he never knew.
Light the fuse! Ryan Malone, the hostage, violates most of the established protocols for behavior by a hostage who wants to live to tell the tale. His candor is not what Cosgrove wants to hear and serves as the fuel that enables him to maintain his charged emotional state. It’s a risky course of action, but coupled with the admission by Nicole that she was to blame for the death of Cosgrove’s son, it completely takes the stuffing out of Cosgrove. All that is left for him is to turn his anger and loss inward. Only quick action by Team One prevents Cosgrove from paying the ultimate price, proving once again that the line between violence to others
and violence to oneself is indeed a thin one.
"Custody" (Season 2, ep. 17) - Click here to watch on CTV.ca
The key to handling most domestic hostage situations is patience and time, using words and naturally fading emotion to bring the hostage-taker to his or her senses. As viewers, we know from looking at the situation portrayed in this episode, that the hostage-taker will not be successful. But, sometimes it takes time for the hostage taker to accept that reality. In a strange way, hostagetakers in domestic situations frequently see what they are doing as demonstrating their love. This is strange because usually they have been dismal failures in demonstrating that love day-by-day before the situation unfolded. Perhaps, they are really trying to convince themselves.
