A: We say our vision is to provide a peaceful process for responding to conflicts. So, we bring people in from all over the area to take our specialized mediation training, after which they commit to two years to volunteer for us, doing mediation work across the community. It's a grassroots effort. The idea is to create a process that is different for everyone who comes to us, to help them handle conflicts through conversation, rather than having them escalate to the point of violence, or calling the police or calling lawyers and suing.
Q: How many volunteers?
A: About 100, from throughout the Miami Valley — students to retired people, professors to stay-at-home moms, and everything in between. We want to really reflect the demographics of our community, so we recruit accordingly.
Q: Your referrals aren’t just from Dayton?
A: Our office is part of the City of Dayton, so we serve the city's residents. But we also have different contracts and grants throughout Montgomery County and beyond, so that we are accessible as possible to many people around the area.
Q: Is it a free service?
A: It is for citizens of Dayton, and it's low-cost for the rest of Montgomery County. We have different programs, such a homelessness prevention grant from the state, so that we can provide free homeless-prevention-type services. Say that someone gets an eviction notice through the municipal court, they will get a postcard and the schedule — and the court says you can call the Mediation Center for assistance in working with the landlord. That way tenants and landlords can get the chance to either work out a payment plan so that they aren't evicted. Or if that can't happen, they can negotiate a better time for the eviction so that it's less impactful on them and their family. That's good for the family and the tenant, obviously, and it's better for the landlord because there's a good chance the property will be left in better shape. The mediation agreement is read into the court record so it becomes an official document and the court backs it up. That way, everyone is a bit protected and there are some teeth behind the agreement.
Q: How many cases come through here?
A: We get about 1,800 referrals a year, and we end up mediating about half of those. So, that's a lot. We mostly do mediation here as a neutral location, but we'll go to apartment complexes, police departments, community centers, churches, libraries — wherever people feel comfortable.
Q: Can you give an example of the kind of situations you may deal with?
A: Say you have two neighbors in a dispute where one property owner keeps their yard pristine, and is upset because their neighbor doesn't cut the grass and has trees and bushes hanging over the property line, making a mess. We get a lot of those. The housing inspector may have been called, and it's not a legal matter but it's a problem for the neighborhood. Another kind of thing would be a neighbor who parks all the time in front of your house — you're irked by it, but it's a public street and it's not illegal, but it bothers you and you don't know how to talk about it with them. Barking dog complaints — a lot of those. By the time the police show up, the dog has stopped barking. What do you do about it? Sometimes, people call us when they are acutely upset in a crisis situation and are afraid they will take improper action right then, and we'll talk with them and talk through options, which helps them to calm down, and think about other ways to handle the situation. Other times, you don't want to go to the level of calling the police or involving the courts, but you aren't sure what to do — so people will call us and talk to a case manager. Our mediation specialist will help them think through what to do, so they can get clear on it. Do they want to talk to their neighbor? How do they do it? What do they address? And we at the Mediation Center will send a letter and get the parties to come to the table to talk things through, if they're interested in participating.
Q: What happens if they get to the table?
A: Our process is different from a lot of other types of mediation processes. We see conflict as a crisis in human interaction. How people communicate with one another is either not helping, or escalating the conflict — so we help people talk and hear each other in different ways. But they are in charge of the process. We are there to intervene and help the flow of the conversation, and help people say what they need to say. But they are in control. We don't direct the conversation in any way, or find the solution — so we are not the judges, and we don't tell people how or what to do. We feel the parties are the experts in their own situation — so our job is to help them get clear, get calm, be less angry and frustrated, so that they will make better decisions for themselves. If they get to see the other party not as a demon, but another person, we hope they will be able to make clear, deliberate decisions and talk through things differently.
Q: Are these sessions binding?
A: Some programs are, others not. If it's an agreement connected to a court system — we have programs associated with small claims court, juvenile court, Dayton Municipal Court — so if it's a case referred through a court and placed into the record, it can be binding. With the juvenile court, say, we may be involved in helping work out custody or visitation plans with never-married parents. There are a lot of things people need to talk about that are not legal issues, but still create conflict — so, a child needs a teddy bear at night, but one parent will keep it when the child is with the other parent. It's not a legal issue, so the court doesn't care about it, but it causes a conflict. So we help work it out. Another example would be small claims court — the court cares that you pay, but the terms of payment are up to the parties involved, so that is part of the mediation process where we could get involved. Most of our work is calming people so they can have the conversation.
Q: So, how do you do that? I’m guessing it’s not as easy as it sounds.
A: The easiest way, really, is just to listen to them. A lot of people will say, thank you for actually just listening to me. Sometimes when people tell you their problems, the natural thing is to want to try to fix it for them, or offer solutions. But really, people just want to vent, and get it out. We help by listening and letting them do that, and reflecting back what they are saying and feeling. Helping them decide where they want to go with the conversation. Instead of us saying, calm down, you're being ridiculous — we will go there with them and follow the conversation, not try to set it in a certain direction.
Q: That can get interesting, I bet.
A: Sometimes people yell and get upset. And we will match their intensity, go there with them, and help them shift to a different place — so that the potential spiral down to a disempowered place will tend to stop, and we can help them build up from that. It's a continuum. They make small steps, and we help people in that way. And I think the preparatory work we do beforehand is important.
Q: Such as?
A: We'll try to reach out to everyone who is coming in for mediation and try to help people understand our process, and what they want to get out of it. Get organized about what they want to do, shift out of a disempowered place to a place where we can have more straight conversation, more grounding, and where they want to do it for themselves.
Q: Is there follow-up?
A: Yes, definitely. Most of our agreements include information that says if things don't work, call us back. Also, we do three- to six-month follow-up calls to see how it's going, is it working out still or do they need us to intervene again in a different way. Most times, they're satisfied. Most cases work out. Sometimes not, but even then people still have a different idea of what they may need to work on themselves, and even that helps people.
Q: So, the thing that brought us here to talk about the center was the recent news story about the Dayton Police Department using the Mediation Center to work out disputes with citizens. Talk about that program, would you?
A: We've been working with the Dayton Police Department on neighborhood disputes for years. Chief Richard Biehl three years ago wanted to expand the use of mediation to address some citizen-officer complaints, and he assigned Lt. Andrew Booher to research best practices in the nation. We created the citizen-police conversation program. We've had it on the east side of the city as a pilot, and now the Dayton Police Department is working on formally implementing it citywide.
Q: How does it work?
A: So, an investigation happens on some level, and if say it turns out to be unfounded, then when the case was closed the parties would get a letter from the department, and that used to be it. There was no real chance for citizens to voice their feelings about the results, and that may not have been fulfilling for them. So we've created a space in which something different can happen — a place where people can come in and address the situation, and discuss it. At first, some officers were hesitant, because they're used to being on the streets and people getting angry with them and they thought mediation would be them just getting yelled at. But I think they found that it's not that bad — we walk to the citizens about what they might say, and how to say it, and so we get a real constructive conversation, not a yelling match in the room. The citizens get to talk about how their interaction with an officer affected them, and the officer gets to explain the bigger situation — so both parties get to say, OK, I see the different perspectives on this. And that can change the dynamics about how people feel about the situation.
Q: A real-world example?
A: We had a young man who was in a car accident, and the officer working it told him he would come to the hospital and take his statement. Instead, the officer just gave him a ticket and sent him on his way. The man's mom and he thought he should stand up for himself, look the officer in the eye and explain his dissatisfaction with how things took place. So they came to us. The officer and his supervisor agreed to meet with the mom and her son, and it was a civil, very productive conversation. The young man was able to explain why he was upset; the officer was able to explain all that was going on at the time, the role an officer plays in cleaning up and removing an accident, getting the car quickly off the street, assessing who was right and wrong, and the dynamics of the choices they have to make. Did it take the young man's ticket away? No, but it was important for him and his mother for him to stand up for themselves when they were unhappy with the service they had received. Her son learned he could stand up and ask questions to officials, and what to do when he believes something hasn't been done properly. You get meaningful dialogue, and people understand each other better.
Q: Try to scale this out for us — multiplied out across the city, how do you think conversations like that could have an impact on police-community relations?
A: I think that if things are going to change, it will happen slowly here and across the nation, with these small interactions like the one I described could continue and ripple through the community. When that young man talks about the police, he might talk differently because of what he learned in that experience. He was humanized, the officer was humanized, and both understood things a bit differently. If you continue these conversations, and people feel heard, and people have access to officers in ways other than just negative experiences like traffic stops, or being served a warrant, then I think we can eventually change the trust in the community with police departments. You can change the dynamics that way. Can it happen overnight? No, but citizens and police need to build trust together.
Q: Which can be a hard thing to do.
A: My goal is for the city to have a more comprehensive plan where all the partners come together — and where we have the fun activities, where police and the community come together at celebrations and events, but also where we create a space and a respect for these deep, meaningful conversations that are messy and hard, but which so vital. Where you have one officer, one person, working things out. There is a continuum of things that need to happen in the community to start making change. This is one piece in a bigger puzzle.
Q: These sorts of discussions seem to be happening more now, or the need for the them seems to be more discussed. Is it because of the news stories we’ve seen around the country?
A: Yes, but I think here locally, the Dayton police had the insight years ago to see this coming, and to be able to create and implement a pilot program for discussion with citizens that now they can expand into all parts of the city. They've done a good job, I think. A few months ago, we had a number of big community meetings, pushed by two Dayton officers who are really big into community activities and decided they wanted to something more meaningful about these issues when Ferguson and other cities emerged in the news. They wanted to start some dialogue between the community and the police and asked their fellow officers to volunteer time to sit down in small groups with people to talk. We met at a church in Trotwood with about 100 people attending, and we would put three citizens with one officer for a small-group conversation about what was going on — everyone sharing their thoughts, with a mediator to help facilitate. So in these small, intimate groups, you had private conversations about these issues. A lot of citizens don't understand what it takes to be a police officer. And a lot of officers may not always understand how they impact citizens. So there were lots of interesting conversations.
Q: What did you hear later?
A: A couple of the street officers said they wanted more — that it was annoying after two hours to just start getting deep and then have to leave. So we're trying to evolve the program now, coming up with other sessions. We'd like to build trust over time.
Q: This sounds ambitious — larger community conversations.
A: We want to build a foundation of trust and respect. One citizen and one officer at a time. What we do best is slow things down — slow down the conversation, the interaction, so that it can happen in a different way. Slow down that traffic stop. Slow down how people talk and think about an interaction, so that they can really feel heard and understood. And everything we do at the Mediation Center is confidential, so the work we do is about what is happening behind the scenes. Our contribution is trying to help our community change and grow in a more positive, constructive way.
Q: What challenges to you face on this?
A: Mostly, just trying to connect everything that's going on. We're all stronger when we collaborate and work on projects, rather than staying in our silos. And the conversations about these issues are really important. But also, just getting the word out to people that we're here to help. I think we're one of the city's best-kept secrets. People may not realize they don't have to be referred to us by the courts or police — they can pick up the phone and ask us about mediation, and we're not cookie-cutter; we will provide a specialized approach to their situation. We want to help people turn conflict into conversation. That's our goal.
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