A call came in to the police and a guy says that he has a hostage and a list of demands. The police are able to track it to an apartment building, either by tracing the call or by the guy just telling them, I can't remember which. The police called in SWAT. They deployed a robot with a camera could see through the glass sliding door a kitchen with a counter and the hostage to the right of that, who is a Hispanic man with his hands tied above his head. The drywall above a door frame was knocked out and the rope was affixed to the stud above the door frame. The hostage had his back to the sliding glass door, while the person who called into the police was nowhere to be seen. They had multiple snipers looking into the room from several vantage points around gathering what information they could get. They saw that every once in a while the hostage would turn around and look over his shoulder and then turn back, as the way he was tied up didn't let him stay turned around.
The guy was still on the phone and this time with a hostage negotiator (I should mention that this ex-swat captain I was talking to had a bunch of video and audio recordings of this event). The hostage holder knew about the snipers as he had spotted them and asked for the "electronic eye" to be removed as it was making him uncomfortable. It was clear now that him first calling in was him reading from a piece of paper or something and now he wasn't. He was less confident and deliberate in his speech. It was also clear that he was looking out the window from somewhere, and the Police and SWAT were able to see that he was tilting his head back and looking just barely over the counter in the kitchen before ducking back down. It was almost unnoticeable. They watched closely and saw that there was some regularity in when he would look over the counter, and when the hostage would turn around.
This is how they actually settled the hostage situation.
They waited until the guy was just looking over the counter, and the hostage was turned around with his back, then using a pole stuck a breaching charge onto the door and detonated it. The glass shattered and got the guy in the face, while the hostage sustained minimal injury. The rest of SWAT quickly rushed in and detained the guy, and got the hostage out of there and into the hands of some medical professionals.