WATCH ABOVE: Former police detective and hostage negotiator Paul Nadeau walks us through the dramatic final moments of the hostage standoff in Sydney, Australia.
TORONTO – Law enforcement and negotiators would have responded to a hostage-taking the exact same way had it taken place in Toronto instead of Sydney, Australia, says a former Ontario hostage negotiator.
“It’s sort of a blueprint for every successful hostage negotiation. We need to systematically work and we’ve learned lessons from previous hostage takings that went terribly wrong and ones that went terribly right,” said Paul Nadeau, a former hostage negotiator with Durham Regional Police.
He said negotiators’ tactics are “identical” around the world.
“Systematically it would be the same process as they used in Sydney.”
And while 16 hours may seem like a long time to be trapped in a café with a gunman threatening more than a dozen hostages, from a negotiator’s perspective the longer you have to defuse a crisis, the better.
WATCH: After more than 16 harrowing hours, the hostage situation in Sydney, Australia has come to an end. Sean Mallen reports.
“One of the main objectives for any hostage negotiator is to try and prolong the incident so that we can actually establish what’s really going on,” Nadeau said. “The calmer the situation becomes over a period of time, the much better it is.”
READ MORE: Timeline of Australia hostage standoff at Sydney cafe
Drawing out a hostage situation also allows police to try and figure out the hostage-takers motivation and get people in place should the situation turn violent, Nadeau said.
The local police force leads the hostage negotiation but there are multiple people in play.
“In the actual phases of the investigation, it’s not simply the hostage negotiator: There’s intelligence going on, there’s armed police officers getting prepared to storm the place if necessary,” Nadeau said.
As the hours dragged on in Sydney late Monday, police stationed heavily-armed officers in the surrounding area soon after responding to the café. They set up a perimeter and evacuated nearby buildings as well. Police then tried to figure out what was going on inside the café. Police Deputy Commissioner Catherine Burn said police were conducting a “sensitive negotiation” but declined to say whether direct contact had been made.
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Around 9 p.m. Australia time, police turned the lights off inside the building. An hour later, 16 hours after the incident began, they stormed the café with a stun grenade and firearms, killing the gunman as several more hostages flee the cafe. Two hostages also died; it isn’t yet clear who killed them.
“They moved in because they determined the situation was going to get radically worse,” Nadeau said. “It was going to get terrible if they didn’t work their way into storming the place at that particular time.”
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