In the scene where the hostage taker is negotiating with Farley and says he can't use the word "no", it is exactly what happened in the Richard Bachman/Stephen King book "Rage." Even some of the dialogue is taken from the book. [I just re-read Rage this week and looked carefully for this scene. It does not exist. In "The Negotiator," the word "no" is what cannot be used by the negotiator and the gunman says that if it is, a hostage will be shot. In Rage, the gun-wielding student rapidly fires off questions to the de facto negotiator and demands that the negotiator answer the questions and never ask a question himself. The end of the scene was also the same with the negotiator getting tripped up and the gunman shooting the gun at no one to frighten the negotiator. However, the condition was different and no portion of the movie's dialog is taken from the book.]

While interrogating Niebaum soon after taking the hostages, Danny talks about Neurolinguistics. Danny says that if someone's eyes move in a certain way it means they are lying, in another way means they are remembering, etc. He is close, but not exactly right about how Neurolinguistics works. Each person does have a set of eye movements that allow a trained interrogator to tell if they are making up statements, but those movements are not the same for everyone. It takes even a highly skilled interrogator several minutes (at least) of questioning on known topics to be able to determine an individual's signs. Danny would not have been able to just begin asking questions like he did and use Neurolingustics to determine if Niebaum was telling the truth, and if the department trains its negotiators in this skill it certainly would train its Internal Affairs agents, the men who have to interview dirty cops, on the same skills. [Danny didn't necessarily know neurolinguistics. He just believed Niebaum was lying and was trying to make him fess up. Niebaum obviously knows even less, so he gets frustrated and believes him.]

Throughout the negotiations, Danny Roman uses his radio to communicate with (and in some cases, manipulate) the police force. So when Roman finally "convinces" Inspector Niebaum to confess to his part in the set-up and to name some of the other people involved, why wouldn't he use his radio so the entire police force could hear the conversation? [Maybe because the SWAT-teams are trying to enter the building and shoot Roman when this is happening. It wouldn't be easy getting heard amongst all the chatter going over the radio.]

When the SWAT team breaks into the building, when they shoot the greande through the glass, you can read LAPD on the emblem on the glass. LAPD? in Chicago? [It looks like LAPD because of the way it breaks, but if you freeze frame it correctly it says IAD for Internal Affairs Division.]