Woman’s Day New Zealand – September 02, 2019

I

t was a frigid, bitterly

cold Christchurch night

as Leairne Dow made

her way to the top of a

city parking building.

Over the next highly

charged four hours, the

veteran cop would use

every skill she had learned

over more than a decade

as a crisis negotiator to

persuade a woman

threatening suicide that

her life meant something.

“It was very emotional

for the whole team,” recalls

Leairne. “The woman

still has some issues she

is dealing with, but she’s

developed into a strong

lady, is working and things

are looking up for her.”

Leairne – a detective

senior sergeant – runs the

national police negotiating

team and heads the

four-person Canterbury

unit, a team that in one

week recently was called

to four suicide attempts.

Members are specially

trained to help resolve

high-risk situations

• armed offender standoffs,
  kidnappings, the March 15
  Christchurch mosque attacks,
  and increasingly attempted
  suicides and serious self-
  harm incidents. They are
  all volunteers, doing their
  negotiating work on top of
  their normal duties.
  Leairne recently completed
  the FBI negotiation course
  at the Marine Corps Base in
  Virginia. She’s the first to
  admit the life and death
  encounters take a toll on
  everybody, but knowing the
  end result can be a life saved
  is what motivates her team.
  “For them [the person
  threatening to take their life],
  they see it as being the only
  way out – they can’t see any
  other way of dealing with
  whatever has brought them
  to this point.
  “You get an enormous
  amount of pleasure when
  you’ve been involved in an
  incident where the person is
  really emotional, they don’t
  know what they’re doing, they
  don’t know where life has
  gone wrong ... and you get

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44 Woman’s Day