Texas State University hosts 29th annual Hostage Negotiation Competition

Campus Community 

Contributor | January 29, 2019

More than 300 law enforcement officers converged on Texas State University for the 29th Annual Hostage Negotiation Training and Competition. Approximately 30 teams participated in the event, with municipal and state law enforcement units coming from across the U.S., as well as from Canada and Singapore. Law enforcement teams conducted mock hostage negotiations, while top experts in the field evaluated the teams' performances. The annual international event is directed by Dr. Wayman Mullins, a professor in the Department of Criminal Justice and an expert in hostage and crisis negotiations and terrorism.

Video Transcript

A hostage negotiator and his team work to calm tensions and bring a standoff to a peaceful conclusion. But this is a training simulation, hosted by the School of Criminal Justice at Texas State University. This competition brings more than 300 law enforcement officers from around  Texas, the U.S. and even as far away as Europe and Asia. Police Psychologist Michael McMains, helped launch this annual training 29 years ago.

“It puts one negotiation team against another to help sharpen their skills and become better at their craft,” says McMains.

“I say it’s a competition but this is probably the best training we’ll get all year because it’s so intel driven, they try to make it as real as possible,” says Sergeant Hunter Lewis with the Texas Highway Patrol.

 In this facility near the San Marcos airport, the competing teams of hostage negotiators are in one room, while Texas State students, playing the role of hostage takers, are in a separate building.

“They’ve all got the same script, they’ve all got the same timeline, and that allows the judges to evaluate them to see what their communication skills are like, what their team functioning is like, whether they’re in their roles correctly,” says McMains.

“What better place to learn the good and the bad points than in a practice situation like this,”  says Lewis.

This training is critical because when negotiators can initiate a conversation in a hostage situation, there is a 95% chance no one gets hurt.

“What happens in negotiations is you step back, you let people emote, you listen to them very closely and that process helps bring that tension level down and that anxiety down,” says McMains.

This scenario training has proven so effective to help negotiators get better at what they do, many of these officers have been coming here for more than 20 years.