Danny roman the negotiator

Homework 2

Analysis of negotiation strategies and tactics in the movie, The Negotiator

Lieutenant Danny Roman, a top hostage negotiator at Chicago Police Department, is approached by his colleague Nate Roenick who informs him that someone has embezzled a large sum of money from the department’s disability fund. Lieutenant Danny is also a board member of the department disability fund. Nate claims that members of their own police unit are involved in the scandal but he refuses to give the name of the informant who he claimed had provided him with the information. Danny decides to go and meet with Nate again, only to find him murdered and seconds before the police arrives at the scene and pin Danny as the prime suspect.

The situation starts to get worse for him when Terence Niebaum, an Internal Affairs investigator whom Nate suspected to be involved in the embezzlement based on Nate’s informant, is assigned to the case in order to investigate the murder. It was discovered that the gun that was used in Nate murder was from a case that Danny had worked before. Niebaum and other investigators decides to search Danny apartment the following morning and found some documents for an offshore bank account which they claimed had an deposit equal to the amount of money that was embezzled. Danny is forced to surrender his gun and the police badge and no one in the department believes in his protests of innocence. Upon noticing that the situation was only getting worse for him, Danny storms in Niebaum’s office where he questions him about his involvement with the embezzled fund and who framed him. Niebaum refuse to answer him and that’s when Danny takes police commander Grant Frost, Niebaum, his assistant Maggie and two-bit conman Rudy Timmons as hostages.

Everyone is evacuated and the building is placed under siege by police and the FBI. Danny then issues his conditions that includes finding who was Nate’s informant and summon police Lieutenant Chris Sabian and another top investigator. The reason why Danny wants Sabian to be placed in the case, is because he is not from the same police department and therefore not connected with the pension fund scandal as well as being having good negotiation reputation where he prefer to negotiate for as long as possible before applying force. These qualities make him trustworthy and Danny is comfortable working with him. The police doubt Sabian’s strategies despite temporarily putting him in charge of the hostage situation after a failed attempt to raid on Danny.

So the most important thing that Danny ought to do is to change the perceptions of other police officers about his murdering. This means that he should the power and influence he possess on others to prove his innocence and identify the mastermind behind the embezzlement of funds. In this case, danny applies competing as one of conflict resolution style in the Thomas-Kilmann model. This means he is ready to stand his grounds in order to defend his position which he believes is right (Carneiro, Novais, & Neves, 2014). Theoretically, people treat power as the ability to alter and change the attitudes and behaviors of others in a given situation. On the other hand, influence can be described as power in action which involves an individual undertaking some tactics in order to change the attitude and behaviors of other people.

Danny main source of power in the negotiation include: knowledge of information since he already knows that a large sums of money had been embezzled from the Chicago Police Department’s disability fund. He also knows that there is an informant and inspector Niebaum might be involved in the fraud. Knowledge or expertise is not powerful itself but it is through its application that confers power. A good negotiator should conduct prior research facts, find out the goals of the other party, and establish areas that give him leverage in the negotiation and then use his knowledge (Carneiro, Novais, & Neves, 2014).. Danny possesses negotiation expertise being a top police hostage negotiator in the department and he is used to “lie for living.” The second source of power that Danny has is personality and individual differences derived from motivational orientation. Danny shows much determination to influence and control others as well as seeking out positions of authority and power since he got nothing to lose in the situation. This makes the police to comply with his conditions for safety of the hostages. Here, the police apply the strategy of avoiding from Thomas-Kilmann which involves diplomatically stepping aside in a given situation, withdrawing from a threatening situation or by postponing an issue until a better time arises (Carneiro, Novais, & Neves, 2014).. The police gives in to Danny’s demands until a convenient opportunity arise to raid him out.

Position-based power is the third source of power that Danny possesses since he has taken Niebaum and several others as hostages. A large crowd of people are watching and the police do not wants the hostages to get hurt. However, those suspected of being involved in the embezzlement scandal want to kill Danny. Danny was a good police hostage negotiator which gives him relationship-based power since he had a lot of true friends in the department who showed him respect for him and would not want to cause him harm. The fifth kind of power that Danny possesses is contextual power based on best alternative to negotiated agreement (BATNA). It is determined by the social environment which implies that other party might share your interests and help pressure either party (Singh, 2008). Some of the people who still believe in Danny’s innocence include his wife and Sabian.