Text Messaging Featured Article

When you think of crisis negotiations, you might think of a tense back-and-forth shouting match between policemen crouched behind patrol cars and suspects peeking through windows. Or maybe you think of an action movie in which the negotiator must call the suspect using an unwieldy police phone while sitting in a control room somewhere. More often than not, negotiations involve speaking on the phone, but have you ever imagined negotiations via text?

Many cops haven’t, in fact, but in recent years more and more suspects have opted to text police negotiators, rather than talk to them on the phone. This past March outside of Buffalo, NY, for instance, a suspect who had shot at deputies responding to a domestic call was in the process of texting with several relatives when law enforcement negotiators got involved. They hopped into the text messaging conversation and were eventually about to convince the suspect to surrender.  

Sheriff's Capt. Gregory Savage, who was involved in the case, told CNS News, "He didn't want to talk as much as he wanted to text. It wasn't part of the training I got when I went through the crisis negotiator school put on by the FBI, but it's something that they are incorporating into any new training."

Despite being added to new training programs, texting still has some limitations. Negotiators can glean a lot from a suspect’s tone of voice, communicating a wealth of information that goes beyond the words they’re using.

"Words are only seven percent of communication," said Tim Christol, police chief for Red Bank, TN. Christol includes texting in his sessions and has published a number of articles on the topic. While many suspects are asking to text instead of talk, most negotiators are viewing this as a way to lead up to phone calls, rather than as a communication replacement. Texting can break the ice, so to speak, and relax a suspect enough to be willing to talk with police on the phone, especially if that suspect is more comfortable texting.