It is no secret many Chicagoans, especially Black and Brown residents, have misgivings, or sometimes worse, about the police.
Rebuilding that trust is key and can help keep communities safe, criminal justice experts, neighborhood activists and the top brass of the Chicago Police Department have repeatedly stressed.
In hopes of moving toward that goal and also expediting some low-level misconduct investigations, Chicago kick-started a six-month community-police mediation program last week that will allow residents and the officers to hash out minor confrontations with the assistance of mediators from the Center for Conflict Resolution.
The pilot program is meant to fulfill a requirement set for the city as part of the 2019 consent decree on policing reform. Which means Chicago — albeit with prodding from a federal court order — is finally getting on the bandwagon with other cities that have already successfully instituted mediation initiatives.
Cities across the country, including New York, Los Angeles, New Orleans and Denver, have had community-based mediation services in place for years, as Rae Kyritsi, programs director for the 43-year-old Chicago-based Center for Conflict Resolution, told us.
Each municipality has its own tailored plan of action, so what works somewhere else may not work in Chicago, Kyritsi said.
But no matter how different these initiatives operate, they have been proven to be effective. They strengthen understanding between a police department and its community, and reduce time and costs, according to the National Association for Civilian Oversight of Law Enforcement. Studies also show police officers and civilians involved in the mediation process are more satisfied than their counterparts engaged in the traditional complaint investigation process, the national civilian oversight association said.
The types of complaints to be mediated, according to the city, will include “allegations related to perceived bias in policing or failures to provide appropriate service.”
The face-to-face meetings in a safe space will be an opportunity to clear the air and allow both sides to hear a perspective they didn’t consider before.
Seizing an opportunity
Mediators won’t provide advice or an opinion about how to resolve a conflict. Instead, the goal will be to create an opportunity for the officer and the civilian to have a productive conversation about the incident and come to an agreement on a realistic resolution.
And while neither the complainant nor the officer will be required to participate in the program, we’d certainly hope top police officials — and the Fraternal Order of Police — would encourage officers to take part.
The same goes for the city’s many policing reform activists, who should encourage community participation. It’s a chance to make good use of a reform tool that’s been shown to work elsewhere.
If one or both parties aren’t interested in talking, the case will be sent back to the Civilian Office of Police Accountability and the Chicago Police Department’s Bureau of Internal Affairs, and the misconduct allegations will be handled through the standard procedure.
The hope, however, is that officers and residents will be willing to come together and resolve complaints, which also include allegations of unnecessary physical conduct and unprofessionalism.
Using mediation to handle lower-level misconduct complaints will also, if the program is successful, ease the burden on COPA, allowing it to focus on the most serious of the thousands of complaints filed each year.
And the more residents and police officers are involved, the better the data stakeholders can sift through to gauge how well the program is running and make improvements, if needed.
Such programs are only “successful when it’s a resource for the community” as Kyritsi summed it up.
The pilot program is set to last six months. A bridge of trust won’t be complete by then, but construction can at least get underway.
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