Captain Frank Bolz served with the New York Police
Department for more than 27 years. He rose through the ranks to that of Detective Captain. In 1972, after the tragedy of the
Israeli athletes at the Munich Olympics, Bolz took part in the formation of the Department's "Guidelines for Barricaded
Felons and Hostage Confrontations". He, with Dr. Harvey Schlossberg, selected and trained the new Hostage Negotiating
Team, and became the Commanding Officer and Chief Negotiator. He remained in that role for almost ten years, during which
time he personally negotiated in more than 285 incidents, bringing about the safe release of more than 850 hostages, without
the loss of life. Frank Bolz was also the City-Wide Kidnap Taskforce Coordinator, training Detectives in all phases of Kidnap
Investigation and personally participating in 25 actual investigations.
He has trained representatives from over 3900 Law Enforcement
Agencies in the U.S., Canada and abroad, including the FBI, the U.S. Secret Service, the State Department, and the United
Nations. Bolz has lectured nationally and internationally on Hostage Recovery, Kidnapping and Terrorism, and has established
liaison with his counterparts worldwide. He has authored numerous articles and training films on these subjects, and co-authored
the book Hostage Cop, authored the book How to be a Hostage, and Live
Bolz most recently co-authored the book, The Counter-Terrorism Handbook: Tactics, Procedures and Techniques.
One reader of Hostage Cop
said, “The author, a member of the German segment of the New York Police Department's "establishment"
teamed with a Jewish psychiatrist police officer to introduce the concept of organized hostage negotiation into the United
States. The principles they taught and practiced are fleshed out in the real case stories that Bolz has collected. In addition
to the cases themselves, the collision between the newer practices, vastly weighted toward saving all lives in the situation,
and the older lines of thought, in which prevailing quickly was foremost, offers useful insight into how some police think
about the issue.
As well as information, "Hostage Cop" offers
a good read for the time invested. Some standoffs are tense and exciting and others offer wonderful absurdities, often the
very essence of a successful end to a crisis. If you like the big roundup and shootout, this book will probably bore you silly.
If, however, you like tales of the power of the state calmed, idiocy avoided, and nasty situations brought to benign ends,
this one will suit you down to the ground.”
According to the book description of The
Counter-Terrorism Handbook, it “will help guide law enforcement as well as industrial and private security
personnel through a terrorism situation or potential threat, including bomb threats, hostage situations, kidnapping, and negotiation.
The authors group the material by chronological sequence: pre-incident, including the background, planning, and preparation
in anticipation of such episodes; incident, concerning terrorist situations such as kidnapping, bombing, and hostage taking
as they unfold; and post-incident, presenting the handling of terrorist incidents once they have been completed and including
the ranking officers' roles in supervising police response.
On September 11, 2001, the world was put on notice:
terrorism can strike anytime…anywhere…anyone. You are told to go about your daily life - but to be vigilant
of your surroundings. You are told that trying to do a cursory profile on potential terrorists is futile because their commonality
goes deeper than the surface. With this in mind, what do you look for in a potential situation, how do you prepare, how do
you protect? Written by experts who have years of experience in the field, The Counterterrorism Handbook: Tactics, Procedures,
and Techniques, Third Edition is an invaluable resource for those who recognize that preparation is the best defense in the
War on Terror. Revised and expanded to reflect information obtained since the September 11th attacks, this latest edition
provides an understanding of the strategies, tactics, and techniques required to counter terrorism as it exists today. It
illustrates essential topics such as the elements common to all terrorism, bomb threats, risk assessment, hostage situations,
and weapons of mass destruction. Find out what's new in the third edition as it: Provides a closer look at what transpired
during and after the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon; Discusses the current state of
WMD's, including threats from chemical and biological agents and those posed by nuclear weapons; Divulges the latest modes
of domestic terrorism, including cyber-terrorism and eco-terrorism; Discloses the latest information on what's going on
with Homeland Security; Covers recent INS laws as they relate to terrorist activity and how they effect homeland security.”
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