June 07, 2007
Lt. Jack Cambria, Commanding Officer of the New York City Police
Department Hostage Negotiation Team, traveled yesterday with 100
members of his unit to the Queens campus of St. John’s University,
where he joined a gathering of law enforcement personnel on hand
for an interdisciplinary academic conference on hostage-negotiation
strategies.
Sponsored by the College of Professional Studies’ Division of
Criminal Justice and Legal Studies, the conference offered
instruction for police officers on how to approach hostage
situations involving emotionally disturbed persons (EDPs). The
event featured a handful of faculty lecturers from St. John’s
College of Professional Studies, School of Law and College of
Liberal Arts and Sciences.
“Jack Cambria is very well regarded by the New York State
Hostage Negotiation Association and is often called upon as a
resource to hostage teams statewide,” said Antoinette
Collarini-Schlossberg, Ph.D., Associate Professor of Criminal
Justice and moderator of the event. “The honor of his attendance
comes from collaboration to bring some very prominent academicians
together with police who handle the day-to-day hostage situations
that arise. It is a vote of confidence on his part that we [St.
John’s faculty members] translate theory into practice.”
Attending the conference were approximately 200 law enforcement
officers from the NYPD, FBI, Waterfront Commission of New York
Harbor, the police departments of Nassau and Suffolk counties and
the New York State Departments of State and Correctional
Services.
Cambria was enthusiastic about the gathering. “This conference
is a great way to keep our negotiators and detectives up-to-date on
the topics we appreciate,” he said during a break between sessions,
noting that he and Schlossberg are already in the planning stages
of a follow-up joint conference featuring lecturers from his
negotiation team. “St. John’s is very generous in continuing to
open its doors to us,” he added.
Many of the St. John’s faculty members who participated in
yesterday’s event have longtime ties to the City’s law-enforcement
establishment. Chief among them is Associate Professor Harvey
Schlossberg, Ph.D. (husband of Collarini-Schlossberg), who
delivered a lecture titled “Reality, Fantasy, Perception, Problem
Solving and Violent Behavior.” Schlossberg, the founding Director
of the NYPD Psychological Services Unit and co-founder of the NYPD
Hostage Negotiation Team, is unofficially recognized by the NYPD as
the “Father of Hostage Negotiation Systems.”
Addressing the audience, Schlossberg said, “Officers are at an
instant disadvantage when they enter into someone else’s craziness
and are forced to make split-second decisions … But we need to
remember we’re called to help people, not kill them.”
Added James O’Keefe, Ph.D., Associate Dean in the College of
Professional Studies and Associate Professor of Criminal Justice,
in his opening remarks: “The pistol and the nightstick aren’t our
only tools. Sometimes we need to use a different tool box, even if
it’s in the trunk of our radio car.”
Other St. John’s presenters included Collarini-Schlossberg;
Raymond DiGiuseppe, Ph.D., Professor of Psychology; David Lehr,
J.D., Adjunct Professor of Law; Susan Lushing, J.D., Associate
Professor of Law; and Mary Noe, J.D., Assistant Professor of
Law.
Participants seemed pleased following the conference. “The whole
program was very well-organized; the only problem was that it was
too short — they could have laid it out over a week,” said Felix
Nater, an independent security consultant who heard about the
conference through word of mouth. “Because I deal with violence in
the workplace, I was excited to learn about how to identify
aggressive situations, like those involving people who might be on
medication. I also learned that if you do everything right, the
justice system will work with you.”
According to many in attendance, DiGiuseppe’s presentation was
particularly enlightening. DiGiuseppe, who lectured on “Anger, Rage
and De-Escalation,” is the Chair of the St. John’s Department of
Psychology, an expert on anger management and an advocate of
adopting anger into the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental
Disorders.
“Anger leads to aggressive behavior, and hopefully this
conference will help the [law enforcement officers in attendance]
better understand how to diffuse the potential for violence when
dealing with angry individuals,” he said before his address.
When he took the podium, DiGiuseppe diffused some common
misperceptions within his own field. He explained, for example,
that aggressive behavior is the result of rumination just as much
as impulse; that anger lasts longer than any other emotion except
joy; that angry people are often proud of their anger and don’t
necessarily want it to go away; that angry people often have high
self-esteem; and that many people view their anger as a pleasurable
emotion. His presentation gave credence to the idea that hostage
negotiators should not flaunt their authority or threaten a
perpetrator’s ego.
The conference was dedicated to Detective Lydia Martinez, a
well-respected member of the NYPD Hostage Negotiation Team who took
her own life earlier this year. Cambria, at times fighting tears,
celebrated her friendship and contributions to the police force
with a PowerPoint photo-collage presentation. At one point, the
entire audience rose to their feet, offering Martinez an extended
ovation.