YELLOWKNIFE - Movies don't do justice to the work that RCMP G Division's Emergency Response Team (ERT) does during high stress situations.

Charlotte Joa, a crisis negotiator with the Emergency Response Team, stands in her office on top of the courthouse, looking out over the streets of Yellowknife. - Jessica Klinkenberg/NNSL photo

"In the movies they make it seem so hyped up and dramatic," said Charlotte Joa, an ERT crisis negotiator.

"In real life, sure it's a tense situation. In those movies you don't see a lot of teamwork. A negotiator doesn't have the power (they do in the movies).

"I've never really seen a negotiation movie that made me say 'That's what I do.'"

ERT members love what they do, said Cpl. Simon McDermott, team leader.

Over the past year, the team has responded to numerous calls, including two within Yellowknife and one in Cambridge Bay for an armed standoff.

"They are high risk situations," McDermott said.

ERT members are regular members of the RCMP who participate in special training twice a month.

They train in different scenarios, from bush simulations to airplane hijackings.

They travel across the NWT and Nunavut as a team.

"There's about eight of us, depending on our roles," said McDermott.

When they get a call they meet up at RCMP G Division headquarters and are briefed on the area and the situation. After gearing up, they go to the location. If it's outside of Yellowknife, the team has a plane that's ready to take them anywhere within NWT and Nunavut.

"It's very clearly defined, everyone knows what they have to do," said McDermott.

Upon reaching the scene they then speak with the commander to get more information, then everyone separates into their roles.

McDermott said the team includes snipers, assaulters who clear buildings and kick down doors, a person in charge of the tracking dog, and the team leader.

For Joa, a crisis negotiator, her job is just as stressful.

"You walk in and you don't really know what to expect," she said.

Joa has been a crisis negotiator since 1996 but she said her job never gets any easier.

Part of her job is to help with information gathering - learning about the individual, or individuals, that are locked in a crisis.

"You can't be judgmental," she said. "If they want to yell at you, you let them yell at you."

Joa has negotiated under some unusual circumstances. Usually she negotiates from headquarters, or from a command post at the scene.

"The craziest one I had was a number of years ago," she said, when a crisis occurred with a hunter out on frozen Great Bear Lake. "I was running through the bush with a bull horn," she said.

"The hardest type of call is to go to a situation where an individual has their family or children in the house, and they're talking suicide," Joa said.

G Division's ERT has been lucky over the years.

"Pretty much every call we've done has resolved peacefully," Joa said.

That doesn't mean there aren't hazards.

"There are bullets fired at us," McDermott said.

An ERT member was once shot, he said.

"We can control what we do, we can't control what the suspect is going to do," he said.