On-scene negotiators were instrumental in ending a nearly 24-hour standoff involving a “person in crisis” on Tuesday afternoon in the area of Mapleview Drive East and Yonge Street in south-end Barrie.
The tense situation began around 5 p.m. on Monday, Dec. 11 and it took until mid-afternoon the next day to resolve the situation when the man peacefully surrendered.
Police say highly trained negotiators from Barrie and Peel Region worked together seamlessly to end the standoff with the 47-year-old Barrie man.
No further information has been released about the man or whether he was armed. Police have also not said whether he has been charged with any crimes.
No injuries have been reported in connection to the situation and police said the individual was transported to a local hospital.
“The involved individual is getting the care they require, first and foremost,” Barrie police communications co-ordinator Peter Leon told BarrieToday on Wednesday.
“Everything else will be secondary and given the underlying circumstances that we’re dealing with, there may not be a formal media release to identify anything further beyond what we’ve discussed over the last day or so,” he added.
The tense standoff shut down a significant portion of the city's southeast end at the interesection of two main roads.
“We haven’t seen an incident of this type in our community for as long as I can recall,” said Leon.
“I think the biggest thing that people have to understand is, we did everything we did — it was calculated, it was well measured — always with the safety of everybody involved,” he added. “It will take as long as it takes. There’s no clock running.”
Leon said as long as a person is talking with police and there is active communication back and forth, that is the key to successful negotiation.
“When you have a situation like that, it takes time to establish a rapport with the individual and get things to a point where they are able to end it in a peaceful manner, as it did yesterday, he said.
As for the emotional temperature of this kind of standoff and its intense roller-coaster ride, things can change fast.
“The situation can derail very quickly, " said Leon. “Things can happen very fast. “It’s about slowing everything down to a point where you are in constant, active communication, letting the individual know that we’re here to help.
“Let’s deal with this situation. Let’s get you to a place where you can get the care that you require and then deal with whatever may have to be dealt with after the fact,” he added.
It's critical to work with the person, said Leon, and build up a relationship with them.
“You want to just continue moving forward,” he said. “It’s when you start taking steps backward, or things start to deteriorate, the challenges come into play and you have to retake that ground you may have lost.”
Leon praised the police negotiating teams and the work they do, and said he appreciates the skill set they have, which he said is second to none.
Leon also stressed the importance of the participation and work of the Peel Regional Police negotiators on Tuesday when they took over the reins from the Barrie police team, who were in contact with the man for the first 12 hours of the standoff.
The changeover needed to be seamless, he noted.
“When the Peel negotiators came, they would have had to explain (to the individual), ‘we’ve been talking to you for a number of hours right now, but there is somebody new that’s going to be here. I’m going to introduce you to them.' And then they hand over and then there’s that level of comfort as well,” Leon explained.
The impact to the general public in the city's south end and their inability to freely go about their business during the road closures and restrictions was not taken lightly by police, he said.
“When you have something like this and it impacts people’s lives and people’s movement and business operation... I know there were a lot of people commenting yesterday, but this is a human life that we are dealing with and they’re in crisis," Leon said. "And we need to do everything we can to resolve it in a manner that gets the person to where we were yesterday and to where they are today."
