Document of Interest Provided By Councilmember Hamann on Civilian Review Boards

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C HAPTER 3: OTHER O VERSIGHT R ESPONSIBILITIES 78 tells all department personnel, “I can’t tell you how to respond to an offer of mediation. But I can tell you that, if you go and it’s successful, there will be no record of the complaint in your files. So what do you have to lose? You don’t necessarily have to apologize or admit to wrongdoing, just explain why you did what you did.” • Mediation can help reduce the hostility and fear some citizens develop toward the police. Narcotics officers in Minneapolis raided an apartment looking for a drug dealer who, it turned out, was selling drugs only when the legal tenant and her three children were out of the building. Conducted at night with a no-knock entry with shotguns, the raid terrified the family. During mediation, the officers (who had done nothing wrong) TWO SUCCESSFUL MEDIATIONS An officer was ticketing a car parked on the wrong side of the street when the owner came out of her house to complain.The officer ran the woman’s name through the computer and found that a person matching her descrip- tion had an outstanding warrant. The officer (a female) pat searched the woman and asked her to wait in the back of the cruiser.The officer then received more information indicating the woman was not the same person, so she released her. The woman filed a complaint because she felt the officer had embarrassed her in front of her children. The officer, in turn, was angry she had to mediate the issue because she felt that, having done nothing wrong, the department should have told the woman the case was closed. At the session, the mediator sat between them and asked them to decide who would talk first. The officer did, asking,“Was I rude?” “No.” “Did I act professionally?” “Yes.” The officer then explained why she had asked the woman to sit in the car, showing her the printout that indicated a person fitting her description—approximate age, race, gender, and same last name—had a warrant out for her arrest. The officer said,“I can understand why you were embarrassed, but if I was going to have you sit in the back of my cruiser, I needed to make sure you weren’t carrying a gun that you could shoot me with in the back of the head.” The woman became less frustrated and ended up satisfied with the officer’s explanation. * * * The complainant reported he had been stopped for driving 45 miles per hour (mph) in a 30-mph zone but that the street was wide and deserted at the time.He said that the two officers in separate squad cars had yelled at him, pinned him against his car (so that his buckle scratched his new BMW),spread-eagled him,and did a pat-down search. The officers present at the session explained to him,“You have to realize what we thought we were seeing. We had been chasing you with our lights and siren on for six blocks and you hadn’t pulled over.” The complainant responded that, precisely because the officers had made no other move to pull him over for six blocks, he was not sure they were signaling him to stop. The officer said he had not forced the man’s car to the curb because there were pedestrians on the sidewalk for the first several blocks and the driver might have pulled onto the sidewalk and hit someone.“So I waited until we had reached some railroad tracks before forcing you to stop.” At one point, the mediators caucused so one could talk with the officer because he was starting to get angry. The mediator presented the citizen’s point of view of feeling “violated” because he had no criminal record yet was being treated like a criminal. Upon their return, the officer explained,“We also thought that someone might have stolen the car, so we had to take precautions in case the driver was truly a bad guy.” This explanation seemed to convince the citizen of the officer’s good intentions. In turn, the officer could see that the man was only reacting to a frightening and inexplicable police action.The parties both apologized and signed a settlement.