Harvey Schlossberg

Harvey Schlossberg is a former NYPD officer, Freudian psychoanalyst and the founder of modern crisis negotiation. He founded the Psychological Services department in the NYPD, where he pioneered treatment for violence-prone police. He helped solve the Williamsburg Siege in 1973,[1] coined the term Stockholm Syndrome, and helped catch David Berkowitz, AKA Son of Sam.

Schlossberg is the author of the book Psychologist With A Gun and is featured in the Library of Congress Ken Burns Award-winning documentary film Hold Your Fire [2] about the 1973 Williamsburg Siege, the longest hostage siege in NYPD history.[3]

Schlossberg trained over 70,000 crisis negotiators globally and his theories, soon adopted by the FBI,[4] Schlossberg is credited with helping catch Son of Sam and saving over 40,000 lives globally.[5] The NYPD Hostage Negotiation Team was the brainchild of NYPD chief Simon Eisdorfer. Some of the deadliest incidents in U.S. crisis negotiation, such as the 1985 MOVE bombing in Philadelphia and the 1993 Waco siege, occurred in locales where Schlossberg was never invited to train the police.

Schlossberg taught at St. John's University[6] for 27 years before retiring.