#126- "Training the Voice of Calm" with Dewayne Poorboy

In Episode 126 of the Blue Grit Podcast, we sit down with San Marcos Police Commander Duwayne Poorboy to explore the intense world of crisis negotiation—and what it truly means to become the voice of calm in moments where every second counts.

Commander Poorboy walks us through his recent experience at the prestigious Crisis Negotiation Competition & Seminar, an elite training event that brought together nearly 40 teams from across the globe. Recognized as one of the longest-running negotiator training venues in the nation—and one of the largest held each year—this competition pushes negotiators to the limits of communication, patience, and tactical problem-solving.

The event’s training seminars deliver both advanced and foundational instruction for professionals operating in the most volatile environments, including:

• Hostage and crisis negotiators
• Patrol supervisors
• Correctional and jail staff
• Tactical & special operations personnel
• Crisis response teams
• Agency administrators & command staff

Hosted by Texas State University’s School of Criminal Justice and Criminology, the Hays County Sheriff’s Office, and the San Marcos Police Department, the seminars ensure negotiators receive world-class instruction rooted in proven crisis-response principles.

Chapters

• 0:00 On The Road In San Marcos
• 0:55 Dwayne’s Path Into Policing
• 4:07 Origins Of The Competition
• 10:00 Negotiators And SWAT Alignment
• 13:45 Crisis Negotiation Beats Hostage Myths
• 18:24 Training For Every Officer
• 22:52 Inside The Two-Day Scenario Design

Transcript

SPEAKER_04: 0:24

Welcome back, viewers, watchers, and listeners. Today we are on the road with the Bluebird Podcast. I am your host, Tom Rowan. Competition. And I've got a representative of them. He's going to introduce himself and kind of give a background of him, himself, and then this competition of kind of how we got this thing started. So, man, I appreciate you stopping here today. And you seem there's plenty of teams and plenty of stuff going on right here in San Marcus and on campus. And I appreciate you stopping by with us and speaking with us. Absolutely.

SPEAKER_02: 0:55

Yeah. My name is Dwayne Poorboy. I'm currently a commander with the San Marcus Police Department. My role in this competition is a co-coordinator with Dr. Wayman Mullins. Dr. Wayman Mullins started this competition in 1990 with two teams, and then it kind of grew from there. That's cool. So this year we have 31 teams that are competing. And the idea is for me to take this over at some point. He's 74 years old and we want to keep this legacy going. That's cool.

SPEAKER_04: 1:24

We usually start the podcast off and start the guest off and kind of give a background of who the person is, where they worked at, and kind of how they got in law enforcement. So tell us about you, where you grew up, and then how you how you entered law enforcement uh profession.

SPEAKER_02: 1:34

So I grew up in Jerdenton, Texas, with this is south of San Antonio. Most people don't know where that is. At Escosa County, I'm proud to say I can pronounce it now correctly. That's right. And uh so after graduating from high school, I went to a semester of college at UTSA before joining the Marine Corps. Um did four years in the Marine Corps and then came to Texas State. Uh at the time it was Southwest Texas to go to college in 2002, 2003. And that was the first time that I was introduced to this competition. Uh Dr. Mullins was one of my professors, said, Hey, I'm looking for volunteers. We've been doing this competition for a lot of years. Can, you know, want students to help out. So I no law enforcement experience at that point. You just had an interest in this competition. That's right. I wanted to help Dr. Mullins out. He's a fascinating uh man, and I wanted to um get to know him and I wanted to um kind of explore this and uh got you know into this as a student. Right. And then, of course, then I joined the San Marcos Police Department, and I had to be on there for a couple of years before I could even apply for the team. And so he started not only this competition, but the Hayes County uh team, negotiation team. Right. And so I was able, after a couple of years, to get onto that team, and I served in various roles over a series of several years. I want to say probably I think it was 15 years, and I was ultimately going to be the team leader before promoting. And then I left the team once I promoted.

SPEAKER_04: 3:05

Man, that's cool that you get to work and see and work alongside somebody that really mentored you in your profession. And, you know, you being involved and so hyper-focused on this type of environment. Let's face it, look, law enforcement has got so many different facets and so many different divisions. Canine, tactical, and then this is a more of a specific type uh, you know, division within law enforcement. And sadly, some of the you being from Jordenton, you're well aware of this. Departments like Jordanton have to rely on relationships with counties and states in order to have a hostage negotiation team. So it's pretty cool for you to work with your mentor, someone who introduced you to the profession. Uh, what is his background? Is he is we he was he a law enforcement officer prior to coming?

SPEAKER_02: 3:43

So Dr. Mullins has a PhD in, I want to say industrial organizational psychology. Okay. Um, he was a reserve officer for the San Marcus Police Department way back in the day. Okay. And then he was a reserve officer for the Hayes County Sheriff's Office because he was still on our team up to a couple of years ago.

SPEAKER_04: 4:01

Right, right. That's cool. So you transitioned over to San Marcus uh police department after getting some interest on specifically this competition. Talk about what this competition looking at on the practicality side of real world scenarios and how it transitioned from utilizing the competition where we know that it's not fake, but it's uh it's a practice, it's practices uh into practicality of real life situations.

SPEAKER_02: 4:25

So this is the only place that I'm aware of where crisis negotiators can negotiate a problem all day long. Oftentimes, negotiators, we do everything with the SWAT team, the tactical team. Yep, right. And so oftentimes, whenever you plan scenario training, what happens is you negotiate for a short amount of time and then SWAT needs to do what they need to do. This um situation is this competition doesn't allow that. As a matter of fact, I tell the teams, I'll give you the schematics of the building, but SWAT's not coming in, no matter what, you're gonna negotiate this. So this is an opportunity to for these teams to work through a problem. He has quite an imagination, I'll leave it at that. If you can solve one of these issues that he does, then you'll be able just fine in the real world. Right.

SPEAKER_04: 5:18

Yeah, for sure. And that's what for you tactical operators out there that are listening or watching this on YouTube, you know, I have a little bit of experience in tactical stuff. I never really got into the Hoshes negotiation aspect, but it seems like to me, or at least when I was back when I was running a gun and that tactical teams and hostage negotiation, for many years, they didn't really communicate at best. And they didn't communicate, at least in the East Texas region, they didn't communicate at the level at which they do now. Uh and what I mean by that is that they didn't practice together, they didn't train together often as oftentimes as they should. What were your experiences or what what what have you seen in the profession that have grown the relationships between tactical operations and tactical units in this realm of Hawks and negotiators?

SPEAKER_02: 6:01

So, of course, there's still that kind of rivalry for lack of a better word. Yeah, but we have gotten much better over the years. And I would say if you're not training with your negotiators or with your TAC team, depending on what side of the aisle you're on, you're doing it wrong. Because the reality is that you can never get enough training, but you don't want the a real deal hostage situation to be the first time that you try to deliver the throw phone or do anything else that could cost someone their lives. And that's why I think this is so important, right? Lives are on the line. And this isn't me being dramatic, this is a fact. Yeah.

SPEAKER_04: 6:40

First point, you know, at that, and we have a lot of listeners that aren't in law enforcement. And the realization is that we may call this host negotiation, but it's a crisis negotiation. You may have a guy that's in a house that has a felony warrant that doesn't want to come outside. He's in the house by himself. And really it falls on y'all's teams and these teams here today to talk him out and to just resolve it peacefully. And I think that's our law enforcement's goal.

SPEAKER_02: 7:01

But this is more specific training. Yes, that's correct. And I think that calling a team a hostage negotiation team, yeah, that's kind of a misnomer at this point because a lot of what we do, I think the numbers strike out to like 96% are people in crisis, and then like 4% are actual hostage situations that we're dealing with. Yeah.

SPEAKER_04: 7:19

I've never had this conversation with somebody who has your much as much training as you have. Uh, with everything going on in the nation, we've seen some some California agencies that are kind of reducing the number of responses to crisis negotiations or crisis situations where a uh mental health consumer, you know, may need some negotiation or may need some assistance on calling law enforcement. What's your perspective on, you know, providing this type of training to all law enforcement, right? And and to the consumer out there, you working in San Marcus and it being such a challenge, um, because a lot of people in San Marcus are from out of state. Uh, they're from different regions of the nation. Let's just face it, let's just call it what it is. Um, Republican, Democrat, it doesn't matter. The fact is, some people really aren't educated on law enforcement. What's your take on how much training the average law enforcement, the American police officers should receive on crisis negotiation in comparison and contrast to what they're getting today?

SPEAKER_02: 8:12

That's a great question. And that's actually where I typically take these conversations is that we always in law enforcement, it seems to me do ourselves a disservice because we say, hey, this is an advanced communication skill. Hey, when you become a negotiator, we're going to provide this training. When you become a detective, we're going to provide interview training for you. But if you really boil down what does that consist of active listening, empathy, building rapport, those kinds of things are basic negotiation skills, basic communication skills, which we've kind of gotten away from. Yeah. And so this is great specific training. But I will also say, and my wife may disagree because she knows what I'm up to when I try to use these skills, but these will benefit, these will benefit uh people um in their everyday lives, no matter what they do. Yeah, for sure. So for sure.

SPEAKER_04: 9:05

Can you can you give us kind of some insight, maybe uh, maybe an example scenario of what these teams, and for the listener out there and viewer another, we don't have cameras today, but you know, I'm sitting there listening or viewing a lot of teams from Texas DPS, San Marcus Police Department, Hayes County, uh, Beaumont, I think, is here, Bernie Police Department, a lot of agencies. Give me kind of an example of a start to finish of what they're, you know, you you show up with the packet, you're you're you're kind of giving an outline of what they're expecting, and then walk me through kind of that process of what these teams are going through today.

SPEAKER_02: 9:32

Sure. So we've got basically two days, Tuesday and Wednesday. We typically have teams split up in half because we have to have actors. And so basically the day starts with an intel brief. And so what I do is I provide them some bare bones information. Then I have some interviews, some intel audios that basically say, okay, this is the first responding officer. This was today was a custodian that was inside the school board room. Um, provide those and then say, I'd love to provide you. I know you have lots of questions, however, I have no answers for you. Give them a phone number for one of the hospice takers, which is going to be typically a college student, is the actors. That's we get them from mostly from criminal justice, the school of criminal justice here. And they make the phone call and they start working the problem. One of the things that I provide them before I cut them loose is a flash drive. We want them to be honest and not listen to all the audios, but there's literally like 30 audios on there. And the goal is to have them go to the intel table. Uh, it's usually uh staffed by a couple people. They say, Hey, I want to talk to this person's wife. If that person's on the list, they'll say, Hey, go listen to audio in. They'll listen to audio in, audio in may lead you to audio R, uh, to another person. Or it might just be kind of a red herring. You never know. Yeah. And so, and throughout the day, as we would negotiate, as we would collect intelligence, the goal is to try to get all of those folks, the right people, um interviewed so that we can try to solve this problem. You know, the more we know about uh a hostage taker, the better off we're gonna be to communicate with them. Right. Um, so lots of times, you know, cops being resourceful, you know, will try to be like, hey, I want to talk to anybody related to this person. We don't allow that. So they got to be a little bit more specific. That's cool. Um, while they're going through that. And so yeah, each team is having to solve this problem. So some of them do really well with intelligence. Some of these teams have tons and tons of people, so that helps too, right? Yeah, for sure. If you've only got three people, it's very difficult. Yeah. But we've seen people show up with three to five members. We don't tell them, hey, you have to have this many members, it just makes it easier.

SPEAKER_01: 12:04

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02: 12:04

Um, the other part of this, and I think this is the most critical part of this competition, is that we bring judges from mostly from Texas, but we actually have some from around the country and even around the world. Uh, for example, we have uh a gentleman that ran the negotiation team for the Scottish uh National Police. Oh wow. And now he is the lead negotiator for the Jesuits. Oh wow. Uh we have a gentleman from Germany who is uh head of their national team, and then we have the a couple guys from uh Austria that are also um part of this negotiation uh competition. So they're providing feedback for the teams. Yeah. You know, they they basically let them negotiate at the lunch break. They'll provide some, hey, here's some good things that you've done. Here's some things I'd work on. The expectation is they add that in that uh feedback in and solve the problem, but they're writing a lot of notes all day long. And our goal is to provide those packets with that those detailed that detailed feedback to the team so then they can build their training program around how they did. Wow.

SPEAKER_04: 13:24

You know what's crazy and amazing if if if if you you process really how big Texas is, look at all the universities, and it's fascinating and should be commendable or commended to San Marcus Police Department in Hayes County for always, it seems like everything that that law enforcement centralized here in San Marcos, it's always been Texas State's always been willing to help out. Texas State's always been willing to kind of partner with law enforcement. And what's fascinating me is that there's not this this this relationship with law enforcement in a university is not like this across the state, right? We've got DBU in Dallas, we've got Houston University, and I'm not suggesting that it never happens, but it's just it's so robust and so overwhelmingly, you know, you know, open-handed that, hey, we'll help you out wherever we can. And we've got actors here from Texas State that are helping out the criminal justice majors. And so kudos to San Marcus Police Department, Hayes County, Anthony Heapolito being an Austin, uh retired Austin guy now, bid the sheriff of Hayes County. But you know, kudos to your both agencies for always partnering with Texas State. And let's just face it, Texas State are always lending a help of hand as we're here at the facilities now today.

SPEAKER_02: 14:24

Absolutely. This cost us nothing. This building is something we've used and they don't ask for a dime. That's true. There's things that we you know have to pay for, but right, you're absolutely correct. We couldn't do this without these facilities. We need all of these rooms. We couldn't go to a hotel for a lot of reasons.

SPEAKER_04: 14:40

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02: 14:40

All these rooms, we've occupied pretty much every room in this building year after year. Yeah.

SPEAKER_04: 14:47

And it seems like this is this is just one training event that we've that hosted here at Texas State. I mean, throughout the whole year, at least since I've been in this region, I see it time and time again. I was talking to somebody the other day uh at a Hays City store up in Kyle, and I was just talking about the overwhelming support that Texas State uh is known for helping out law enforcement. Absolutely. Yeah. Talk about uh you being a commander and the the training that you've received for those commanders that are listening with to this podcast right now. Talk about the impacts that it kind of prepares you to make those administrative command decisions and having this training behind your belt and under your belt. And what would you recommend to anybody out there that may be in your position or in their positions in commanding the type of patrol division, uh, what benefits would it be for them to attend some of these kind of trainings?

SPEAKER_02: 15:32

Again, this is going to be basic communication skills. I think that by putting us in boxes and saying, hey, you only get this training if you take this route, we're shortchanging ourselves. Because the reality is that no matter what, whether I'm talking to someone on the street or I'm talking to one of the uh guys and girls that I work with, those listening skills, that empathy, that rapport over time is what benefits that relationship.

SPEAKER_01: 16:00

Yeah, right.

SPEAKER_02: 16:01

And so a lot of people I think believe that like it's gimmicks, right? Like we're just trying to trick these people um into coming out. And the reality is that because so many of the folks are in crisis and they're mental health consumers, we may deal with them again. Yeah, and they won't forget. And so I would just say the more training you can get related to those interview negotiation skills, again, we like to put it in boxes. So that's kind of how you would have to go look for that training is look under crisis negotiation, look under um the interview interrogation kind of space, yeah, in order to be a better communicator.

SPEAKER_04: 16:46

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02: 16:46

Just because again, no matter where I go in in the organization, um these skills have benefited me from as a narcotics detective, as a CID detective, as a sergeant, you know, running a unit, to now having, you know, 20 um guys and girls that I work with on a day-to-day basis.

SPEAKER_04: 17:09

You know, as when we're recording this podcast, unfortunately, this week we've lost two of our brothers. Uh and every time that happens, I'm always kind of resulted back to different events that I've I've suffered and gone through in my career with loss of my my co-workers, San Marcus not being exempt from that as you guys have lost uh within the last five or ten years. I spoke with your captain uh about three months ago on the loss of the two San Marcus police officers within so many years. What is that type of tragedy this week? You can feel it on the heels of this event today. Uh it kind of puts things in different perspective. Can you talk about that?

SPEAKER_02: 17:46

Sure. Um yeah, that's it's a hard thing to discuss just because we're a small agency. So statistically, you would have never thought that. And so anytime a police officer is killed in the line of duty, uh it's a tragedy. But to have it happen here twice within a three-year period, um hit me, hit my family hard. Yeah. Um just because, you know, the young guy that was killed, uh, my family, my son, uh my wife knew him. Um so yeah, I mean, it's one of those things that obviously uh chokes me up. But at the same time, I believe that this profession, you believe this profession is a noble profession. And I think that, you know, as much as my wife's like, you need to do this and get out of this as soon as possible, um, I've doubled down and said, no, we're we're doing this. Yeah. And so um, my encouragement would be, you know, get all the training, get all the skills as much as possible, because if you exit, then, and you know, I respect what everybody wants to do, you know, with their life. Um, but at the same time, I would just say that, you know, our experience um being on the front lines and being in these positions help me kind of help the young people future navigate this. And so I don't wish that on anyone, but I will say because I've gone through that, it is that perspective that now I can add to them to encourage them during when times are tough.

SPEAKER_04: 19:18

Well, and again, I'll touch back on the who who mentored you and got you involved in this profession is that you you never know who you're gonna meet. You never know you're who who you're gonna mentor, and the small things matter in life. And kudos to uh the doctor that introduced you to this profession. Yep, Dr. Mullins. You're you're doing that now with some of these students with the criminal justice. You you could do it right now, walking past a student at Texas State University. You could do it walking past somebody at a at a gas station. Speaking of a noble profession, this is the best profession, in my opinion, across the world, because you have so many different aspects in life and impacts on so many different families without even saying a word. Your presence matters, right? And kudos to everyone that continues to carry on uh the following. Legacies of our brothers and continue to put that badge on, strap their boots on, and go to work every day. Uh, it's why I took the job within TMPA to be the communications guy to continue to fight, speaking up for you guys when you guys can have a voice. And so it's it's an honor for me to do it. But you know, I thank you for for stopping by with me today. And I can't imagine um, you know, right now being a police officer, especially this, we've lost two officers since the first year uh in these kind of conferences and this. You can you can feel the tone of seriousness of training such as these today.

SPEAKER_02: 20:28

Absolutely. So you want to leave anything anything else? No, that's um, I appreciate you taking the time and for me uh share this because I and you actually read my mind uh in a sense that sometimes people again misunderstand what this is all about. And if I just take it back to the basics, this isn't me, you know, just kind of trying to say, oh, this isn't special. There's lots of specialty to it. Yeah, but when you boil it right down, it's just about communication.

SPEAKER_04: 20:55

Yeah, well, and and and to kind of speak on that, you know, when we when we first started law enforcement, probably started around the same time, you know, SWAT teams, uh tactical training was only given to tactical units. And I think we as a profession have learned over time is that everybody needs this training. It makes us so much safer as a as a whole to receive the same training. So we're on the same page for active shooter responses. We're in the hometown of Alert, right? Alert's right down the road. And so it's so important to have those trainings available to everybody, not just specific specialized units.

SPEAKER_02: 21:26

Yes, it's unfortunate that we've got to have that level of training, but the world we live in, absolutely. Well, hey, we usually end up a podcast with three rapid fire questions.

SPEAKER_04: 21:34

Okay. First question is what is your favorite line from a cop movie or a favorite cop movie? The wire. The wire. My favorite. Naturally, that's fitting. What is your favorite police car that you've ever driven?

SPEAKER_02: 21:51

Probably my first one since it was a crown vic. It was a piece of junk. You know, everything's so fancy now. Those things roared, man.

SPEAKER_04: 21:57

You would hear those crown victs coming when you called for help, and you you could hear the sound of those crown vic and know they were they were on point. What's your favorite drink of choice when you're uh hanging out with the family, you and your wife or hanging out with some buds? What's your favorite drink of choice when you're cutting back and relaxing off the job? Shinerbach. Shinerbach. Yep. That's very central Texas. It is, yes, sir. Brother, I appreciate you stopping by, man. Appreciate what you're doing here and appreciate you having us. Absolutely. Thank you.

SPEAKER_03: 22:24

All right, you guys take care, stay safe, and God bless you. And as always, may God bless Texas. We're out.