CAZENOVIA — On Thursday, April 8, Benjamin Baughman, Ph.D., will present “The Origins and Basics of Hostage Negotiations” as part of the 2021 Great Minds/Great Ideas Virtual Faculty Library Lecture Series.
Baughman is an assistant professor at Cazenovia College and the director of the criminal justice and homeland security studies program.
His lecture, which is sponsored by Cazenovia College, the Cazenovia Public Library, and the Manlius Public Library, will be presented at 5 p.m. via Zoom.
“Fictional accounts of crime and police remain an area of interest for many people,” said Baughman. “It is my hope that the public’s interest in hostage negotiations will be enough to have them tune-in for our short conversation about what really happens in situations like this. Furthermore, some of the principles related to conflict resolution and de-escalation are areas that are both drawn upon in crisis negotiations and applicable to everyone.”
The presentation will begin with a cursory discussion of the contributions of Dr. Harvey Schlossberg and Captain Frank Boltz’s to hostage negotiation in the mid 1970s.
Schlossberg and Boltz are both credited with adding the first formal de-escalation option (hostage negotiating) to modern policing.
In addition to exploring how hostage negotiation in policing got its start, Baughman will also discuss his own experiences and education.
The speaker has a bachelor’s degree in criminal justice from East Carolina University, a master’s degree in investigative psychology from the University of Liverpool, England, and a doctorate in philosophy/investigative psychology from the University of Huddersfield School of Health and Humanities in the United Kingdom.
Before joining the Cazenovia College faculty last fall, Baughman retired from the Raleigh Police Department after 15 years of service as a police sergeant, detective, crime analyst, and hostage negotiator.
He also served as an instructor with the North Carolina Justice Academy and taught law enforcement intelligence and investigative psychology at Mercyhurst University.
Baughman responded to his first hostage situation during his second year on the job when his department’s 73 trained negotiators were unavailable.
With no experience negotiating and minimal knowledge of that area of policing, he was forced to think on his feet.
“My sergeant handed me a megaphone and told me to have the suspect ‘surrender,’ Baughman said. “. . . Although I didn’t fully appreciate it at the time, this was an extremely high risk but low frequency event with no time to think it through. It is in situations like these that an officer’s system 1 decision-making process draws upon pattern recognition type of heuristics that are most apt for mistakes without the relevant training, similar experiences, and/or related knowledge base.”
Baughman said his decisions regarding what to say and do that night were partly based on depictions of hostage negotiators in movies.
Luckily, he recalled, the subject’s estranged wife, who was being held against her will, heard his attempts at negotiating and was able to escape out a back window with her two young children.
Once it became clear that the situation involved a barricaded subject, who had no hostages but refused to surrender, the department’s Selective Enforcement Unit (SEU) was given the “green light to go tactical.”
“After deploying gas, our SEU team went in and arrested the subject with minimal physical injuries to those involved,” Baughman said. “Afterword, my sergeant said he thought I did good job, and he suggested some up-coming hostage negotiator training. My perception of how well I did was in complete contrast of my sergeant’s kind words, so I went to the training in hopes of never again placing another person at risk due to my ignorance. The training, in conjunction with the event that got me there, sparked a passion within me that has only grown as I have witnessed the importance of this area of policing.”
For more information about attending the lecture, or to sign up for email updates, visit cazenovia.edu.
