Research as well as everyday police practice around the world consistently show that police negotiations are one of the most effective police tools for resolving all types of crisis interventions peacefully with almost 100% efficiency, that is, without the use of force. Police negotiations emerged in the USA in the 1970s as an alternative to the then-current method of resolving crisis situations based solely on tactical interventions, which often resulted in the demise of a large number of police officers, victims, hostages and perpetrators. They quickly proved to be an extremely effective way to resolve crisis interventions and are now present in almost all police systems and organizations in the world. Psychology as a discipline has been part of police negotiations since their inception as one of the pioneers of police negotiations was a psychologist. To date, several different police negotiation models have been developed, and the most effective and recent models were created based on psychological and therapeutic principles and techniques. This paper will present the emergence of police negotiations in the world and in Croatia by presenting the aforementioned models from the earliest to the most recent.

police negotiations, crisis interventions, negotiation models