Good Listening Seen as Key in Hostage Dramas

Anaheim Police Officer Steve Stempniak’s career as a crisis negotiator began the day he pushed open a bathroom door and found a despondent 17-year-old sitting on the floor slowly working a knife back and forth across his wrists.

As blood began oozing out, Stempniak started talking to the youth to gain his trust--and save his life. An hour later, the teen-ager surrendered, ending his suicide attempt and launching Stempniak on a new path within the Anaheim Police Department.

“It happened so quickly that I didn’t have time to think,” recalled Stempniak of the incident several years ago. “I just tried to remain calm, and it seemed to work. . . . I guess I got lucky.”

Luck or skill, Stempniak has twice more proven himself as negotiator in recent days, defusing two emotionally intense hostage situations in Anaheim that sorely tested the 32-year-old officer.

On Thursday, Stempniak coaxed a heavily armed 15-year-old out of a classroom of drama students at Loara High School. Then, on Saturday, he spent five hours persuading a distraught man, who police say had already killed his ex-girlfriend’s son, to surrender after holding a 67-year-old woman at gunpoint.

Both times, Stempniak was called to the scene by radio and asked to use all his moxie and finesse to soothe the nerves of hostage-takers who were a trigger-pull away from taking lives.

Stempniak’s success Thursday at Loara High actually worked against him for a time Saturday.

Police said George William Burnside had already shot one person and was holding the victim’s grandmother in the family’s home when Stempniak arrived at the command post in the 1300 block of North Aetna Street. The suspect, during his first telephone conversations with police, said he would not “make the same mistake as the Loara kid,” Stempniak said Sunday.

“He kept saying the kid should never have quit,” Stempniak said. “He had done it all wrong.”

But five hours later, Stempniak had his man. The gunman released the grandmother unharmed, then police pulled Burnside from the house and arrested him on the front lawn.

“It’s truly a combination of luck and being able to deal with the person. And you have to listen well,” said Stempniak, a laid-back sort with an easy delivery. He is considered so cool under fire that one detective jokes that he has a “pulse rate of zero.”

“He doesn’t rattle easy,” the detective said. “He’s smooth and believable.”

But Stempniak, one of 14 officers and detectives in the Anaheim department trained in crisis negotiations, said he is not acting when he engages a gunman or potential suicide victim.

The key, he said, is to be “straightforward and sincere . . . I have no hesitation of asking anyone any question. Sometimes the directness surprises them. But more often than not, it puts them at ease. It sends a message that you’re not there to bluff and play games.”

Another crucial factor, Stempniak said, is using time as an ally.

“If it takes several hours to work through a situation, fine, take the time,” he said. “If you rush, you’re likely to push the wrong emotional button.”

On Saturday, Stempniak said the suspect holding the grandmother issued demands, including a request to see a close friend, though Stempniak said he could not discuss specifics of the conversation.

“Demands are always the starting point,” he said. “You find out what they want and then work for a compromise.”

The pattern was similar at Loara High. Cordell (Cory) Robb, the armed ninth-grader who walked into the drama class and wounded one student in the face, demanded to see his stepfather. It was the youth’s strained relationship with his stepfather that friends say triggered the 40-minute hostage ordeal.

When Stempniak received the call to head for Loara High School, he was conducting a routine search of a vehicle in which two people had been reported to be sleeping.

“I thought it might be an 18- or 19-year-old with a gun,” he said. “I was surprised at how young the boy was. I’m just glad he was willing to come out.”

Stempniak talked to Robb by telephone. The conversation lasted just 15 minutes before the teen-ager gave up and walked out, much to Stempniak’s relief.

“Because so many students were involved, I was a little more tense,” he said.

Police did not bring the youth’s stepfather to campus. But Stempniak said he did keep his promise to accompany the teen-ager in the squad car to the police station where he was questioned.