The need to go the extra mile

Three bullets did the job. The death of the man who held hostage the daughter of his former boss, put an end to the eleven-hour drama in Kebon Jeruk, West Jakarta, on Dec. 8, 1994. Many praised the highly efficient and effective action taken by the three special police officers who fired the shots. The frightened hostage was freed alive, though she had been wounded by her abductor.

According to the detailed report in Kompas, the man met his death after four bullets had been fired. There must have been an incredible amount of tension there at the time. Having a daughter myself, I know that the girl's parents must have been frightened and so worried about her safety. And the police must have been very concerned and anxious to put an end to the drama as quickly as possible.

But a number of questions popped up in my head ever since I first read the news. Was the decision to kill the man right there and then -- with the thirteen-year-old girl so close to him -- indeed a professionally thought out one? Wasn't there a less radical alternative? Were people already under so much pressure that they could not think of any other action to end the situation?

I also wondered why people did not go the extra mile and consider alternatives with less risk to the hostage? (Remember the one stray bullet that missed the man?) Please forgive my stupidity, but I ask myself why people did not simply put sedatives in the food that the man had asked for. Even if he had forced his hostage to share the food with him, no harm would have been done.

Furthermore, I also asked myself whether a professional negotiator was ever called to persuade him to give himself up. And then again, given the fact that the man had been asking for his family to be taken to the place, was it not possible to have one of his own daughters persuade him to surrender peacefully? Is it too much to assume that such a desperate man would at least listen to his own daughter? Needless to say, doing so would have required people to go the extra mile. On the other hand, shooting him was a much more effective shortcut.

Had people gone the extra mile, they would perhaps have taken into consideration the possible trauma the abducted girl would have to suffer from the nightmare of having a man shot to death while holding her captive. Had people gone the extra mile, they might have gone so far as to think of the fates of the innocent members of the man's family, who may now be haunted by the trauma for the rest of their lives. Had people gone the extra mile, perhaps a less extreme measure would have been taken. Or, could it be because the man was just a driver -- vulnerable and expendable -- people did not bother to go the extra mile?

As I read follow-up reports on the incident, I realized that I had some justification for my silly questions. First, it was clear that the man was desperate. Anyone who has learnt a little psychology would tell us that a desperate man would be unable to think and plan intelligently. Besides, the man was just a driver and not a trained terrorist; no matter how high his IQ was and no matter how many action movies he had watched, it was such a slim chance he could have gotten away with what he did.

The report says that at one point this man had actually got the money he had demanded. I may sound unrealistic, but in my naive thinking I figure that he must have much difficulty thinking and planning his next step as he already had Rp 125 million in his hands; his mind must have been clouded by the thoughts of what he was going to do with so much money. Which, I believe, would give the officers a chance to subdue him in a less violent way.

Perhaps people did not bother at all to go the extra mile to find a milder solution. The trouble is, going the extra mile is not a tradition in our society. Instead, so many in our society prefer shortcuts. We want to get rich quick, forgetting altogether such virtues as hard work, discipline, perseverance, and loyalty. We want "to get there quick" at any cost (and that is just the reason why, at the most basic level of our social behavior -- it is so difficult for most of us to queue).

This man's death has given us just another example of our society's strong tendency to take shortcuts. Ironically, the very ending of his drama was also another example of how we prefer shortcuts and how we do not care to go the extra mile.

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