BAGHDAD, Iraq – The Civilian Police Assistance Training Team, as part of their on-going effort to organize, train and equip Iraqi police services, began a Hostage Crisis Negotiation course this week at an undisclosed location. Iraqi police officers from all over Iraq and from different Iraqi police agencies are attending the course.

“This course is a tool,” said instructor Wayne Lehman. “We’re giving them tools, resources, and ideas. We give them some concepts to be able to work things out for themselves.”

The course has 31 students from the Iraqi Police Service, Department of Border Enforcement, the Iraqi Highway Patrol, the Major Crimes Unit and other agencies. The two-week course was implemented recently and it gives officers skills in coping with the rash of kidnappings occurring in Iraq. Many of Iraq’s kidnappings target Iraqis.

On Sept. 16 ten Iraqi police officers in Magdad traveled to a residential neighborhood as part of their regular street patrol when they ran into a hostage scenario. A suspicious man was reported in a neighborhood and as police investigated the report, a gun fight broke out.

It was then that police noticed that there was a boy being held hostage. After a 45 minute standoff, the five year-old boy was removed safely and four suspects were taken into custody. The boy, the investigation revealed, was a hostage who had been kidnapped for ransom by the suspects.

The course covers principles of negotiation, negotiation criterion, considerations, techniques and guidelines, as well as other topics. But the course, Lehman says, is not all inclusive and it is not designed to prepare police officers for high-profile political kidnappings.

“It’s a philosophy we’re going to give them here,” Lehman said. “We’re here to try to teach them how to deal with the day-to-day stuff that the local cops have to deal with. It’s got to start somewhere. They’re on the street everyday.”

Lehman, who taught the FBI’s hostage negotiation lesson plan in the United States, assembled the course plan from scratch. Ordinarily, most hostage courses also include a segment where a psychologist teaches a block of instruction. CPATT’s course doesn’t include a psychological segment, but Lehman says the organization is working on it.

“It’s got to start somewhere,” Lehman said. And this course will help officers with a kidnapping problem that Lehman called, “Immense.”

Capt. Hatim Uthman, a police officer in Baghdad since 1995, and a graduate of three training courses since the fall of Saddam Hussein, said the course broadened his thought process on the job.

“This course gets me to think about things differently,” Uthman said. “It offers new information for me. We’re here to try to learn how we can help in kidnapping scenarios.

“We’re all experienced here, but this is new to us,” Uthman said.