My Father the Hostage Negotiator
Jack Cambria
As lead hostage negotiator for the New York Police Department, Jack Cambria participated in thousands of hostage crises. He’s probably most well-known for John Turturro’s fictionalized portrayal of him in the 2009 remake of The Taking of Pelham 123. Over his thirty-three-year career with the NYPD, the Brooklyn, New York, native (born in Carroll Gardens in 1954) rose from beat cop to lieutenant in Sunset Park, headed up the Emergency Services Unit, and, finally, led the Hostage Negotiation Team. He currently provides hostage-negotiation training around the world and consults for film and television. He has two children, Melissa and Chris.
the day i was born, my dad was up on the Brooklyn Bridge, talking a potential jumper down. He saved the guy and then rushed over to the hospital where my mother was in labor, sirens blaring. He made it in time.
During more than three decades with the NYPD, my dad conducted more than five thousand hostage negotiations. When it came to his children, he was, obviously, a tough cookie—I never really got away with the typical bargaining teenagers do. The rules were the rules. The thing is, though, Dad was almost preternaturally calm. He rarely got ruffled. I chalk this up, of course, to his professional training.
But most of Dad’s approach—not only to his work but to us, his family—came from his Brooklyn upbringing. Dad was born in Carroll Gardens and grew up in Bensonhurst, two small family-oriented neighborhoods in New York City. He always had a sense of community. What’s more, his parents raised him to treat everyone with the same level of respect. Respect was a big thing in the Cambria household. As Dad worked his way up from being a beat cop in Sunset Park to a SWAT team leader, these early lessons really helped him. He could connect with anyone. He got down—or up—to their level and spoke to them without judgment.
I think Dad was so tired of enforcing rules all day at work that at home, he just went along with whatever Mom said. He was also really easy to talk to. He had a saying he used at work and at home: “Always talk to me. Tell me what’s going on.” I was a good kid and didn’t get into as much trouble as my friends. I made sure to always tell Dad how good I was, too.
But though Dad was calm, there were some lines we weren’t to cross. I had a midnight curfew, which, by and large, I respected. But one night, a bunch of friends and I went to a nightclub out on Eighteenth Avenue in Bensonhurst. I meant to call my dad to tell him I was going to be late, but I guess I forgot. Eleven turned to midnight and midnight turned to one and I was having a great time on the dance floor. All of a sudden, the music stopped and the DJ came on: “Will Michelle Cambria please come to the DJ booth?” I remember thinking, That’s funny. I wonder if we’re related. The music started up again for a few minutes and then it stopped yet again and I saw Dad, in his stiff white lieutenant’s shirt, on one side of the dance floor, striding toward me. Everyone parted before him like he was Moses. He grabbed my arm and frog-marched me outside. Then he put me in the cop car, in the back, and we drove home. I didn’t talk to him for weeks.
When you’re an NYPD negotiator, failure can be a matter of life and death. But my dad rarely spoke to me about the times when things went wrong, when hostages died or jumpers jumped. I know he took every loss hard and carried it somewhere deep within him. But he never really showed us that. I wonder sometimes if he had someone to talk to. Yet I think he used all of it—all the love we had in our home and all his professional failures, too—to help him save lives. He once said that the key to being a good hostage negotiator is to love someone and to be loved, to know the bitter taste of loss and what despair actually feels like. Dad marshaled all of his life experience to save the lives of other people. As his daughter, I was both a part of that and privileged to benefit from his tremendous empathy.
Jack and Melissa (six years old) at the headquarters of Emergency Service Squad 6 in Brooklyn, New York, 1992