Police Chief Gary O. Smith said at a recent Safety Advisory Board meeting that Fiedler is “just so smooth.”
“He can be yelled at, cussed at and he remains so calm,” Smith said.
Fiedler was the negotiator at the scene on Feb. 6 when a three-hour standoff between police and a distraught man ended peacefully. The incident began when the shotgun-toting man entered a bar looking for his estranged wife.
It ended after three hours of negotiations with a SWAT and crisis team when the 31-year-old surrendered from a house in the 2100 block of South 49th Street. No one was injured in the incident.
The Temple Police Department has six negotiators on its SWAT team available every hour of every day to those who are in need of a listener, a calming attitude and all the time needed to settle a situation.
“Preservation of life - that’s our goal,” Fiedler said.
The time needed may be a couple of hours or an entire day - it just depends on the situation.
“We have a backup negotiator and they will stand right near me, know everything that is going on so they can take over in need. Usually, once you have built up a trust with the person you want to stay with them - they have confidence in you. It is emotionally and physically exhaustive,” he said.
His voice inflection doesn’t waver as he speaks. As Smith said, Fiedler is smooth and totally in control. “I am not an aggressive type,” he said.
He attributes his demeanor to his time in the U.S. Marine Corps.
“They build your stress level up so high, there is very little that will affect you in stressful situations,” he said.
Whether or not a negotiator is needed is an assessment made by officers on the scene, who consider the risk factors. And every situation is different.
“If they believe there is a risk to officers or the residents in the community, that’s when they call in negotiators. It’s better to call in a negotiator than to put an officer’s life at risk,” he said.
“Most of the time when a negotiator is called to a scene, you are obviously dealing with someone that is either in a crisis or they’re dealing with some type of mental illness. The majority we deal with are mental illness,” he said. “We come across a lot of people that are normally on medication, or their medication has been interrupted for some reason or another and they lose control.”
Fiedler said the negotiators are there to preserve life and deescalate a situation.
“In order to get your point across to someone - I could yell and yell and yell at you - you will see my body language, but you won’t hear what I am saying,” he said. “Mostly, these people just want to talk. They want someone to listen. I am there to listen to them. If they have demands and we can cover them, we will. Simple things like food or cigarettes can be covered; in return, we usually get a little more information.”
The more information that can be gathered, the better the picture the SWAT team gets mentally.
“We can find out what weapons are in the house, if there are any. Where windows and doors are. Where they are located in the house. Who is with them,” he said.
Depending on the intensity of the situation - officers can get worked up too, he said.
“We want to calm the whole situation down. Getting in a SWAT team takes time. Getting in medical help takes time,” Fiedler said. “By continually talking to the person I can make time for everyone else to get into position.”
That’s one important aspect of negotiations - it takes time, he said - to calm the person in crisis, assemble a SWAT team, and set perimeters.
Training is conducted once a month and consists of scenarios made up by officers.
“It can be something they have experienced, heard about or read about,” he said. “They go all out, they can cry and scream and we treat it like a real-life situation.”
And, it’s not always a negotiator who makes it to a scene.
Not too many months ago, a negotiator was called to the overpass on Third Street, over the railway tracks. An on-duty policeman was able talk the victim down and take him into custody before a negotiator arrived.
“All police have to have just a few negotiator skills,” Fiedler said.
