Few negotiators can imagine negotiation scenarios more stressful than the kinds of crisis negotiations the New York City Police Department’s Hostage Negotiation Team undertake.

The Program on Negotiation received an article from Jeff Thompson and Hugh McGowan, Ph.D., outlining the techniques and strategies that the New York City Police Department Hostage Negotiations Team employ while dealing with high-stakes, high-pressure crisis negotiation situations.

Jeff Thompson, a NYPD Detective, is a research scholar at Columbia University School of Law and a Ph.D. candidate at the Griffith University Law School in Queensland, Australia. Hugh McGowan is a former commanding officer of the NYPD's Hostage Negotiation Team, having led the HNT for 13 years. The NYPD Hostage Negotiations team handles more crisis negotiations in one month than most departments do in a year and, in 2012 alone, the department handled 400 such negotiations, one of which was well over 50 hours long and included a team of 17 crisis negotiators.