Settling arguments isn’t a police officer’s job. KC needs more conflict resolution

Officials with the Kansas City Police Department’s South Patrol once told me about being called to the same house in the neighborhood to deal with the same issue eight separate times. The complaint? The backyard flooded when it rained.

One of the officers told me that with the department’s other calls, he didn’t have time to deal with a situation that seemed intractable. He said simply, “This is not what we were trained to do.”

The community needs police officers to respond to life-threatening situations. But when homelessness, mental illness, trauma, landlord/tenant problems and interpersonal conflict are the issues, the answer is community-based service providers, not law enforcement. These types of agencies are trained and equipped to respond to underlying human needs.

Today, we are hearing calls to defund the police. To me, that does not mean doing away with uniquely trained and skilled police officers. It means we need to fund other options so that people don’t see 911 as their only recourse for every situation. It means funding service providers who are trained to handle situations that the police are not trained for, and that they frankly don’t have the time or desire to deal with.

The Center for Conflict Resolution has been in the Kansas City area for 20 years. We are impartial facilitators, mediators and trainers. We help people get along. A referral to our agency from police begins a process of contacting all parties in a dispute. Sometimes, we spend hours on the phone hearing their stories. These phone conversations with skilled mediators can de-escalate situations to the point that the people in conflict agree to a face-to-face conversation. In mediation, everyone gets to tell his or her story and everyone gets to listen in a calmer and more formal atmosphere, with a facilitator who has everyone’s best interest in mind.

Trained and experienced facilitators are able to move people through their anxiety, frustration and helplessness. In 95% of cases, the situation is resolved. Complicated conversations can bring about amazing results. People often learn what they have in common and can see the harm they’ve caused. And 95% of the time, the situation does not escalate to the point of requiring more calls to 911 and does not end in violence or even homicide.

It often takes many hours to work a case that may have been brewing for months or even years. Grants and donations don’t always cover all the costs, but still we have made a promise to serve all members of the community with equitable and fair processes. With the high homicide rate in Kansas City, conflict resolution is a resource that should be fully funded as one of the alternatives to calling the police.

Before the COVID-19 shutdown, the Center for Conflict Resolution had a three-quarter-time conflict resolution specialist at Gregg/Klice Community Center. This service was embedded in the neighborhood, in an area of the city that experiences high crime and violence. Community centers are accessible places where people feel safe and comfortable. Terry Rynard, director of Kansas City Parks and Recreation, has indicated she would like to expand the program to other community centers so that alternatives to violence become the norm in the city.

Police statistics show that the No. 1 cause of homicide is arguments. An alternative to calling 911 to keep disagreements from becoming violent would relieve police officers of one of the burdens they were never meant to deal with. This is one piece of the puzzle we are all trying to solve to reduce and eliminate the senseless loss of life that can begin as an argument and, without intervention, quickly soar to violence.

This story was originally published June 19, 2020 at 5:00 AM with the headline "Settling arguments isn’t a police officer’s job. KC needs more conflict resolution."