At the close of my two-week AIAD with the LAPD, which focused on the tenants of crisis negotiation, I noted that the most applicable training to myself as a future military officer was the suicide prevention training that all members of LAPD's Crisis Negotation Team underwent; I didn't expect hostage or barricade situations for which the Los Angeles Department trains ceaselessly to handle to arise in the type of setting that a Platoon Leader would ever work in.  That view shifted as I was thrown into a number of mock scenarios over the past month at our cadet field training.  During our urban operations introduction, a group of us were tasked with entering the residence of the local sheikh in order to establish a relationship with him and gain information about the area.  How quickly the intensity of a situation can escalate became evidence about 45 seconds into the excercise, when a member of our squad shot the sheikh's son (bad idea).  Immediately emotions intensified, weapons were raised, and chaos ensued.  As we tried to calm the enraged residents and secure our own safety, our squad leader let himself be led, alone, into a small room at the rear of the building (bad idea #2).  A guard posted up outside of the closed door, and those of us left in the hallway were suddenly faced with what appeared to be a hostage situation.  At this point, we were at a loss of ideas regarding how to proceed in a scenario that we had handled disasterously thus far, so decision-making more or less stopped, and stood ("pulling security") helplessly, surrounded by our unfriendly hosts.  I decided then that any decision would be more effective than indecision, and approached the guard who was separating me from my fearless squad leader.  After a few minutes of expert negotiating, attributed to the top-notch training I received in Los Angeles (ok, so maybe it was closer to bribery than negotiating), I was allowed to enter the room.  Tensions inside were as high as they had been in the hallway, and now my squad leader and I were outnumbered.  My squad leader (not passing judgement on his course of action) had chosen to adopt a "do as I say or else" attitude in his conversation with the sheikh, but I noted upon entering the room that the two of us were clearly not in the dominant position at that point in time, which perhaps explains why the squad leader was making little (or no) progress.  As I eased my way into the conversation, I modestly conceded that the sheikh was in fact in control of the situation (I remembered from the LAPD school's culminating excercise that it is sometimes useful to admit that the hostage-taker is in charge), and this simple statement, along with a shift in tone from arrogant to temperate, did wonders to de-escalate the situation, and we were able to make at least a marginal amount of progress (although in reality all hopes of creating a working relationship with the sheikh probably went out the window in the instant that his son was shot, so our group was doomed from 45-seconds into the exercise).