Jonesboro police add 6 negotiators to team

The Jonesboro Police Department’s Critical Incident Negotiation Team more than doubled in size earlier this month with the addition of six new members.

Those added to team include Sgt. Susan Gray, a Crisis Intervention Team training instructor who has been with the department for 21 years.

“The negotiation team usually handles a barricaded or suicidal subject or a hostage situation,” Gray said. “We try to make contact with the subject, de-escalate and come to a safe ending for all parties.”

Also new to the team are Wellness Coordinator Mike Hart and officers Mekhi Williams, Kiandra Moss, Logan Mason, and Andy Starnes.

Gray and the others have finished a 40-hour basic negotiation course and will receive annual training. The team’s goal is to take an advanced training course, Gray said.

She said the negotiation team will often respond to calls in a joint effort with the SWAT team, but the negotiators are responsible for handling communication until the situation becomes a tactical one.

The negotiation team had four members before the six joined their ranks.

Members of the team can work many different jobs while responding to a call, Gray said. One person is the primary negotiator who handles communicating with the subject. A secondary negotiator, also called a coach, handles information from all other parties and is the only person who speaks to the primary negotiator.

Other members of the team could be put to work finding information on the subject, interviewing relatives and determining the cause of the crisis.

CRISIS INTERVENTION

Gray has worked as a Crisis Intervention Team instructor since 2020, before she began training for the negotiation team.

“It’s very similar but it’s also very different,” Gray said. “CIT is done face-to-face. You can read their body language and they can read yours. In crisis negotiation, it is almost always done either over the phone or through a speaker or something like that.”

Negotiation requires one to focus on choosing the correct words and tone so that the message is not interpreted incorrectly, she said.

“CIT training has been a major, major help when dealing with people having a mental health crisis,” she said. “Even before I went through it, I knew how to talk to people, but [the training] gives you so many more tools to be able to help them.”

SAFER OUTCOMES

Gray said the goal of negotiating is to achieve safer outcomes for everyone involved.

“Obviously, if they hurt or threaten another person, those things have to be dealt with properly,” she said. “But then also to still try to get them the mental health help that they might need and not just ignore that side of it.”

However, negotiating doesn’t always work out the way police want it to. She recalled a 2007 incident that required a tactical response.

“We had a husband take his estranged wife hostage, and negotiators worked with them throughout the night, but it came to a point where we had to make a tactical move because crisis negotiators were not able to talk him into putting the weapon down and coming out,” Gray said. “And then, when the SWAT team went to move, he shot her and then shot himself.”

COMMUNITY REACTION

Gray said the community has responded positively to the negotiation team’s work.

“I think it is a generally positive [response], knowing that we are trying to better ourselves, our department and to be prepared for a situation,” she said. “You know, hoping we never have it but being prepared if we do.”

Gray said officers are coming around to it as more opportunities become available.

“When I first went through CIT training, a lot of the older officers did not receive it very positively. Some who’ve come through training, I’ve seen a major change in them,” she said.