Hostage Taking Result Predictable

You have likely read the news of the hostage-taker at Union Station in Toronto last week. After close to an hour of pointing his gun at police and at the hostage’s head, the hostage-taker, Tony Brookes, was himself shot dead, with one shot to his head.

The Toronto Police said that he refused to negotiate and refused to drop his weapon. Fearing for the safety of the hostage, the police and civilians, they felt they had no choice but to shoot him. I think the police did what we expect them to do.

Think about the situation for a minute. When the police "negotiate" with a hostage-taker, there are only two options: give up or we will take you out. They don’t phrase it that way, of course.

They will say almost anything to get the hostage(s) freed unharmed. They may lie to the hostage, and so they should. They will do whatever they can to defuse the situation, without violence. However, where there is a real risk of harm to hostages or others, there are only two things that will happen: the hostage-taker starts to co-operate and reduces the risk to others, or he will be taken out (in a manner that poses the least possible risk to the hostage) at the first opportunity.

The police, in these situations, are not aiming for the legs, either. Police are trained to "shoot to stop". That is not the same as "shoot to kill", although it may end up that way. In this case, they had to prevent Mr. Brookes from even getting one shot off, so they really had no choice but to shoot to kill. As he was using the hostage as a human shield, they had to shoot for a part of the body that they could see and hit without harming the hostage. Unfortunately for Mr. Brookes, that part was his noggin. Hit it they did and a whole lot of people had the misfortune of seeing movie-style gore played out in real life. One young fellow remarked that "you see this stuff in the movies and you think it is cool, but it is not very cool, not very cool at all."

You ask yourself, if the hostage-taker realizes that the only real choice he has is give up or die, why don’t they all give up? Hostage situations are extremely stressful and people’s minds don’t always work properly under such stress. Some people seem to think that they will escape. Others are simply unwilling to face the legal consequences that will follow once they have given up. Others still are looking to be shot, which one radio station was hinting at when they reported that Mr. Brookes had left a tape recording of his plans for that day, which may have included suicide.

If that is the case, things worked out pretty well for Mr. Brookes. It’s just a shame that he had to terrorize a hostage and thousands of civilians to achieve his goals.