This man could save your life

Ben Lopez has spent 17 years bartering with kidnappers – and he’s never lost a hostage. The secret, he says, is psychological skill and gut instinct ‘You must be John. I’m Ben Lopez.” “Good to meet you, Ben.” We both know he isn’t called Ben Lopez, but we maintain the pretence. Everyone has to have a name and his might as well be Ben Lopez. For the past 17 years, Lopez has worked as a kidnap and ransom negotiator, a job in which his own safety – as well as that of the hostages – depends on his anonymity. Not that you can miss him in the flesh as he is 6ft 5in tall and about as broad. Which turns out to be pretty much why he came to be offered the job. Lopez trained as a psychologist in the US and worked in a psychiatric hospital. Whenever patients threatened to become violent, the staff looked to Lopez to sort them out because of his size. “I enjoyed the challenge,” he says. “I found I could control the patients into doing what I

Posted by on August 14, 2011. Filed under News, Politics, World News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.