The longest hostage siege in New York history took place in Brooklyn in 1973, after a bungled attempt by four young Black men to steal guns from John and Al’s Sporting Good Store. As the hapless robbers (mistakenly assumed to be radical members of the Black Liberation Army) cut the phone lines and took hostages, a small army of trigger-happy NYPD officers prepared to strike. But a wonky cop with a PhD in psychology, Harvey Schlossberg, urged caution and restraint. The revolutionary concept of hostage negotiation was born on that fateful night. Stefan Forbes’s gripping documentary has all the tension of Dog Day Afternoon with a Rashomon-like complexity woven in. As all the participants remember it – the surviving robbers, the hostages, the store owner, the police officers – each sees a different story. This largely forgotten event proved to be a turning point in policing, and its message resonates with renewed force in our volatile times.