> A lot of guns drawn breaking down door situations could be made a lot less dangerous if police stop assuming they need to break in right now. Sure, but "righ

> A lot of guns drawn breaking down door situations could be made a lot less dangerous if police stop assuming they need to break in right now. Sure, but "right now" is a matter of perspective. There just is not a great answer to hostages being taken by armed & violent criminals. At a certain point you either need to take the initiative, or you're just responding to an opponents initiative. The best case in a situation where the criminals don't give up is an indefinite and expensive situation where dozens of highly paid people stand by feeding pizza to terrorists with a Twitter/Cnn/Facebook simulcast. Someone has to make a move at some point. That said, I do agree with you in principle. If you can get as much information as possible while building rapport, thats ideal. Unfortunately, this isn't always an option and it is very unlikely there will be a good outcome as both parties have diametrically opposed incentives. As you stall for time and gain reinforcements the bargaining power of your side goes up, forcing a more aggressive posture from the other party. That's sort of the Nash equilibrium here, a good outcome is probably an on the ground plea deal with limited violent exchange. Not agreeing violence is the answer but not every hostage taker is John Gruber or the Money Heist crew. Edit: I think this was kind of the rationale on 9/11. Most hostage situations on planes were resolved without huge casualties[1] and then all of a sudden non-rational actors kamikaze the planes, not only killing themselves and the hostages, but using the plane as a weapon. There are a lot of versions of this happening that substantiate taking action. I'm glad I'll likely never have to call the shots on something like this. [1]https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_aircraft_hijackings https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_aircraft_hijackings