Drawn from his book of the same name, Inspector Sean Pollock (Ret.) delivers a practitioner-to-practitioner examination of what makes a crisis negotiation team effective - from the first selection decision to the final debrief.

This session moves through the full operational arc of the discipline: building a team beyond the comfort zone of peer recruitment; understanding the distinct demands of suicidal, barricaded, high-risk warrant, and hostage deployments; and the often-overlooked value of cross-training with communications staff, tactical teams, and community partners. Sean works through the science of incident assessment - the 5 Ps, established subject-classification and motivational models - before turning to the Incident Command Triangle and the negotiator's responsibility to communicate assessment with the same precision as Tactical.

The session closes where the work itself does: on leadership, realistic training, the discipline of the debrief, and an honest reflection on the calls that change us - and why we answer them anyway.