CHAPTER 8
GUARANTEE EXECUTION
During a dangerous and chaotic prison siege in St. Martin Parish, Louisiana, a few years ago, a group of inmates armed with makeshift knives took the warden and some of his staff hostage. The situation was especially nervy because the prisoners were both tense and disorganized, a worrisome mix that meant anything could happen.
The negotiators sensed that, beneath the bluster, the prisoners didn’t really want to hurt the staff. They knew that they felt backed into a corner and, more than anything, they wanted the situation to end.
But there was a stumbling block: the inmates were afraid that the prisoners who gave up after taking correctional officers hostage, not to mention the warden, would end up beaten, and badly.
So the negotiators delivered a pair of walkie-talkies to the inmates and designed this elaborate surrender ritual to get the hostage-takers to end the siege. The idea was elegantly simple: The inmates would send out one of their guys with a walkie- talkie, and he’d walk past the three perimeters of combined multiagency law enforcement that were stationed outside the prison.
Once he’d walked past the final perimeter, he’d get into the paddy wagon and be transferred to jail. There, he’d use the walkie-talkie to call the guys back in the prison and say, essentially, “They didn’t kick my ass.” And they’d know it was okay to come out just like he did, one at a time.
After some haggling, the inmates agreed with the plan and the first inmate comes out. It starts off great. He walks past the federal zone, then the SWAT zone, and then he makes it to the outer perimeter. But just as he’s about to climb into the paddy wagon, some guy sees the walkie-talkie and says, “What the hell are you