Who we are
The Team
Our team comprises former senior British police officers whose specialism was, and remains in the field of Hostage and Crisis Negotiation (HCN).
Each member of our team was the head of their respective Force’s H.C.N. Unit, responsible for the conduct of all hostage and crisis incidents.
Our experience has been acquired over many years both across and beyond the United Kingdom. We have safely negotiated all manner of ‘life at risk’ situations, including kidnap, blackmail, hostage barricade and hijack incidents.
We have trained and instructed alongside professional psychologists and covert teams including UK Special Forces.
We continue to provide training programmes nationally and internationally. Our clients to date have included UK Police Forces, law enforcement and non-governmental bodies in places such as Greece, Sierra Leone, Colombia and Mexico. We have delivered to crisis management teams in the private sector in the UK, Kuwait and the Philippines.
The knowledge and experience is also available to you.
"It is too late learning to dance when the music has already started."
What we do
Training, Testing, Assessment and Policy Writing
Red Centre (UK) Associates can provide:
- A bespoke training programme with real-time exercise scenarios to attack-test the resilience of your crisis management team and key personnel in a safe and secure learning environment.
- Tailored presentations on kidnap, extortion and product contamination, including the physical and psychological processes, and an opportunity for you and your family to listen to a former hostage.
- Awareness of criminal surveillance and counter surveillance techniques.
- Individual risk assessment reports for your personnel and their families.
- Formal written assessments for all participants, evidence of achievements, training and development needs identified.
- Attack testing of your response capacity and structures, and guidance on the design and construction of sage policy.
- Certification of your investment in training.
We can also provide vital Listening and Influencing Skills Training to those parts of your business that interact with people on a daily basis in situations of conflict and potential crisis. Although primarily aimed at Crisis Management Teams, the lessons are easily transferable to all staff members that are appropriate to your organisations crisis response policy, for example switchboard operators.
These skills underpin many of the current management theories in such fields as Emotional Intelligence and Neurolinguistic Programming. We deliver them in a practical way, reinforcing the theory with hands-on practice.
This will be of benefit to, for example:
- Reception staff.
- Customer Service personnel.
- Managers and leaders at all levels of the organisation.
Products
Police training
Red Centre (UK) Associates can provide:
- Training for police hostage and crisis negotiators worldwide
- Hostage and Crisis Negotiator recruitment and selection guidelines
- Initial Hostage and Crisis Negotiator training programme
- Advanced Hostage and Crisis Negotiator training programme
- Kidnap and Extortion (Red Centre) training programme
- Senior Officers' Workshops
- Equipment advice and guidelines (including technical options)
- Advice on policy, strategy and operational procedures
- Risk assessment and threat evaluation
- Mentoring and development of trainers
- Role play and live training exercises for any incident from a single person barricade or suicide intervention to aircraft hijack
- Investigative expertise
- Quality assurance of your hostage and crisis response teams
- Independent assessment and evaluation of your response capacity and structures.
The team will provide a bespoke training service to reflect the anticipated threats to hostages and any critical incidents wherever they are deployed.
Products
Private sector training
"Any training that does not include the emotions, mind and body is incomplete; knowledge fades without feeling"
Red Centre (UK) Associates can provide:
- Real time and realistic experience in exercise
- Crisis response
- Policy writing / testing
- Personal and physical assessments of safety
- Planning and security advice regarding travel
- Management and co-operation advice regarding the media
- Risk assessment
- Needs assessment
- Threat evaluation
- Investigative expertise
Related article: Learning to Dance
Can we help you?
When the Crisis Begins
In a crisis situation, possibly with a life at risk, you will probably call the police and they would do their best. They know their jobs, and their limitations, but do you believe that you are fully prepared?
We have been deployed to life at risk situations on many occasions. We worked alongside good people who had never experienced such a threat before; it was no surprise that they were not prepared for the trauma of what we had to deal with together.
When life was at risk, incompetence, panic and uncertainty were not required, and were potentially fatal, yet we saw at least one of these, and often all three, when we arrived.
It was not possible to train people in what to expect, nor how to deal with the situation, when the next demand call was due in five minutes time.
We were, and still are, in the business of reducing threat and saving life.
We always wished that the people managing the crisis had been trained to understand what would happen, what was required and how we could resolve the situation safely. It was a realisation they all came to share
Can we help you?
Critical Questions
Someday, should a crisis situation turn sour, lawyers may ask you a number of difficult questions:
- Were you as prepared as you could have been?
- What Crisis Management Training have you had?
- What were you taught?
- What were the aims and objectives?
- Did you learn through role play and live exercises?
- Were you formally assessed? If so, by whom?
- What made you think you were qualified to manage a situation where lives, or your company's finances, were held at risk?
These could prove to be very embarrassing and an expensive series of questions. Worse still, if it goes wrong, there are more than finances and reputations to consider.
You do not face these problems often, but you may face them tomorrow.
We know the difficulties and what you can expect — we have faced them on numerous occasions over many years.
We want to use our experience to help you to be ready.