"You have to be calm, you have to be able to diffuse the situation, you have to be able to talk about everything," says Sheryl Sunia, a retired homicide detective with the Honolulu Police Department. She spent 29 years on the force, and 19 of those years as a hostage negotiator.
"The longest (standoff) I was involved with was 27 hours," she says.
This latest standoff on Maui lasted over 48 hours.
"As long as that person inside that house is talking it's working, cause he's no hurting others he's not hurting himself," says Sunia.
She worked several high-profile hostage situations in the past and believes crisis negotiators have to use any tactics available to get a suspect to surrender, no matter the time it takes.
"Byron Uyesugi, I was the negotiator for that, for the Xerox case, and he wanted a diet coke and I said I would get him one."
She says the pressures put on a criss negotiator are intense, but their job is paramount.
"You have all these people who have been displaced from their homes, that's on the back of the negotiators mind. Command is looking at the over time, they want this to end."
Sunia says history has shown, that as long as no lives are at risk in a stand-off, there is no need to rush in.
"If you look at the statistics nationwide for hostage negotiations, during a tactical situation when the tactical officers and SWAT officers are going in, that's when officers are most likely during these instances to be killed."
Maui Police Department credits their crisis negotiators, tactical team and SWAT for bringing this standoff to an end and convincing the suspect, Josiah Okudara, to surrender peacefully.
"They are in a hopelessness and a helplessness situation, you want to talk to them and have it really be their decision to come out, not because you say," says Sunia.
Okudara was arrested and taken to Maui's main police station where he is awaiting charges.
