What are the first words you say to someone barricaded in their home and threatening to blow up the entire neighborhood? These are the types of questions that Tatiana Brillant had to answer in the heat of the moment. A former negotiator at RAID, an elite unit of the national police, she looks back on her experience: her strategies for understanding the state of mind of her interlocutor, the Bataclan, the difficult integration of women into intervention groups.
4 mins
“ A few years ago, my husband and I were visiting accommodation. I couldn’t help but negotiate the price of the rent. €100 per month saved. When we left, he couldn’t believe it: “But Tatiana, no one does that!”“. Tatiana Brillant is convinced: it was not the job of negotiator that made her like this, but it was because she was like this that she became a negotiator.
At just over 20 years old, while she was planning to become a lawyer, Tatiana discovered through an article the job of a RAID negotiator (research, assistance, intervention, deterrence). His blood only makes one circuit. She found her calling. A few years later, with the officer’s exam in hand, she fulfilled a dream that would last 13 years. She now shares her experience with public and private companies, NGOs, at conferences, and even in her book The Voice of the Raid: negotiating to save livespublished by Mareuil.
Far from cinema clichés
Often, our imagination of criminal negotiation has a Hollywood feel: a negotiator, at the foot of the building, shouting through his megaphone to promise wonders in exchange for the release of the hostages. In fact, everything is false in this representation. “ The megaphone is mainly used to suggest another mode of communication », confides Tatiana.
And for good reason: “ What we are looking for in a negotiation is to create a bond, a little intimacy. Therefore, we favor discussions over the telephone or face to face. “. As for the fallacious promises intended to obtain the surrender – absence of judicial reprisals and other helicopters – they are foreign to the ethics of the RAID. Lying would guarantee losing all credibility during the next negotiations. “ In any case, what would be the point of telling a barricaded murderer “cooperate, and you will not be condemned” ? He wouldn’t believe us “.
Adapt to your interlocutor
Another cliché dies hard. “ People often assume that if an individual has withdrawn, he must be crazy. But there are a lot of completely rational people, unknown to the police, who go to such extremes. “.
A third of the individuals with whom the RAID is required to negotiate are suffering from a mental pathology. “ It’s not that much », comments Tatiana. But negotiations with schizophrenic or paranoid individuals – the most frequently encountered pathologies – require preparation. So Tatiana trained in criminal psychology and psychiatry, among others, notably at the Paris psychiatric institute.
The aborted Bataclan negotiation
From 2004 to 2017, Tatiana traveled to numerous high-voltage theaters of operations. Among these, the Bataclan. Nine years ago, almost to the day. After entering the concert hall, the RAID locates one of the attackers holed up with hostages. This one asks to negotiate. As Tatiana prepares to address him, the attack is launched. The negotiation will not take place. “ It was the right decision », recognizes Tatiana. “ We later understood that the attackers were only waiting for one thing to activate their explosive belt: to know if the RAID or the GIGN was present. Like many terrorists before them, they wanted their last act to be to kill those charged with fighting them. “.
“ You’re not the first chick to come and fuck us… »
The RAID has 500 operational agents, for only 3 women. So the preconceptions are legion. After receiving Tatiana’s application, the RAID training unit contacted her by telephone: “ We won’t take a wife. But come take the tests, it will distract us » she hears on the other end of the line. To be selected, this former high-level gymnast will have to undergo sporting events whose scales are identical for men and women.
But the jokes don’t stop after the selections. “ You’re not the first chick to come and fuck us… », a colleague told him, shortly after his arrival. “ It’s okay guys! We will be able to open a daycare », he continues.
So when she is called for her first mission, Tatiana knows that she will have to prove herself. “ What stressed me out wasn’t even going into a hostage situation, it was proving to my colleagues that I was up to the task! “. Mission accomplished.