Police negotiators use patience, endurance to defuse crises

A man stood on the ledge of a five-story parking ramp at St. Luke's Hospital, ready to jump.

Officer Steven Yardley got the call.

A police officer since 2001, he switched off his lights and siren as he drove from the station to the scene. He didn't want to spook the man, and those squad car sirens echo through downtown.

He parked quietly on Tenth Street NE and spied the man straddling the wall atop the parking garage. Yardley ran up the stairs, stopped to look through the window of the stairwell door, pushed it open and walked into the sunshine.

“My name's Steve. Just want to talk to you for a minute,” Yardley remembers saying.

He settled in a few feet from the man. Not too close.

It's one of the rules that Yardley - and about eight others in the Cedar Rapids Police Department - follow when attempting to save the lives of suicidal people or those in a hostage or standoff situation.

Yardley, 40, spent two years of his life underwater. He served in the Navy on a submarine in the early 1990s. Voyages typically lasted 90 days, and he passed the time by working, training, sleeping, playing cards, watching movies and reading books.

That thorough background in patience and endurance was helpful at St. Luke's on March 12, as midafternoon turned to early evening and the suicidal middle-aged man stuck to his perch atop the parking ramp. No food, no water, no bathroom breaks.

Behind Yardley were two more police officers. A doctor and nurse joined the group. Yardley, a friendly cop with short-cropped dark hair that's starting to go gray, did most of the talking.

“You're meeting a stranger for the first time, and you're trying to establish a connection,” he said.

Forty-five-feet below was a narrow strip of grass, the sidewalk, another strip of grass and then 10th Street NE. The man shifted position over the course of the afternoon and evening - first both feet over the edge and then straddling the wall - but he kept talking.

“It's easier to tell a stranger your problems than your own family,” Yardley said. “You don't feel like you're going to be judged.”

Lt. Tim Daily was the scene commander. He stood in the stairwell, watching through the window. He ordered traffic blocked on 10th Street NE, cut power to the parking ramp and headed off frustrated hospital staffers unable to get to their cars at the end of the week, while Yardley and the man talked about life.

Daily, as watch commander, also kept track of what police were doing throughout Cedar Rapids.

“It was a Friday afternoon,” Daily said. “There's no busier time in the city.”

The sun went down, it started to get cold, the wind picked up and light rain started to fall. From the stairwell, Daily watched Yardley and the other officers rub their hands and blow on them.

Traffic streamed by on First Avenue. To the southeast, the steeple at Immaculate Conception Catholic Church marked Third Avenue. Beyond that was Mercy Medical Center and, even farther, Mount Trashmore.

“It's hard to stay mentally sharp for six hours,” Yardley said.

In his career, Yardley has tried to talk four people out of jumping. He's succeeded twice. The two who jumped - one died after hanging himself from the Five-in-One Bridge; another broke his legs when he threw himself off a building on the southwest side.

Yardley took a three-day class in crisis management - that is, negotiating for a hostage, diffusing a standoff or persuading someone not to commit suicide - five years ago at the Iowa Law Enforcement Academy in Des Moines.

Yardley said he tries to stay calm in any crisis, from a potential suicide to a domestic argument. Part of what he offered the man at St. Luke's was a rational, big-picture perspective: Life is better than death; most problems in life pass or grow less painful.

“(Suicide is) a permanent solution to a temporary problem,” Yardley said. “There's no ‘do over.' ”

Daily and Yardley wouldn't say what was bothering the man at St. Luke's, out of concern for his privacy, but Yardley said the talk went in “peaks and lulls.” Several times he thought the man was coming around, but there would be a setback.

As the night wore on, Sgt. Matt Mullen, also a trained negotiator, had to retrieve coats for Yardley and Randy Vest, the other police officer on the scene.

In all, about 10 officers spent the bulk of a shift saving one man's life.

“Right before 9 o'clock, I sensed that we were getting somewhere, but at the same time, in the back of my mind, I was thinking, ‘What if ... we're out here all the rest of the night?' ” Yardley said. “Part of him was still in a mental crisis. It was one of those things where he had the whole internal conflict.”

At 8:56 p.m., the man said, “OK, I'm done.” He hopped off the wall and walked toward the officers, who checked him into the hospital's psychiatric ward.

Yardley and Daily won't say what persuaded the man to choose life. It might handicap them, they said, the next time they have to try to stop a suicide.

They would say, however, that the man is doing well.

Reporter Adam Belz explains why he did this story