By Alexandra Duggan
The Spokesman-Review, Spokane, Wash.
SPOKANE, Wash. — As protesters continue to rally against President Donald Trump’s administration, the Spokane Police Department is shifting how it interacts with demonstrators to be more engaging.
Protests against the president’s controversial immigration crackdown and other policies have ramped up in the months since his second term began, as have demonstrations against Tesla, the electric car manufacturer owned by Trump’s unelected adviser, Elon Musk.
Amid these protests, a recent policing strategy launched in Europe is making waves across the country.
“Dialogue policing” has proven to be effective, especially following the George Floyd protests of 2020, when police are managing large crowds, according to two Ohio State University professors’ research published in Police Chief magazine.
The Columbus, Ohio, police developed its dialogue unit after the protests five years ago, and the unit has now grown to more than 50 members, according to reporting from the Columbus Dispatch.
The blueprint is simple: If police communicate with people more often in an effective way, they will engage with officers as protest facilitators instead of protest suppressors. The officers will situate themselves in the middle of a protest to focus solely on helping people achieve their First Amendment expression within the confines of the law, rather than spending time entirely focused on enforcement and confrontation. It’s where police will start to engage in an “open dialogue” with protesters or counterprotesters to establish rapport, the publication says.
Spokane Police Chief Kevin Hall sent three officers from the department’s tactical team — designated to manage large crowds — to a conference in Ohio during the first week of March to better understand the approach. Hall has been a vocal advocate of data-driven policing since his appointment in August.
After coming back from the conference, which hosted officers from across the nation, dialogue officers clad in blue uniforms have been out the past few weeks at recent Spokane protests that remained peaceful.
“The success we’ve had so far and the response from the organizers and the people so far has been overwhelmingly positive. They’re taking photos with (police). They’re having a good time,” said Spokane Police Lt. Kyle Yrigollen , who is in charge of the team. “We are definitely taking an approach to it that’s very reasonable and try and do things that don’t get people injured. We want to keep people safe and keep public order, but also really encourage and support people to express their First Amendment rights, redress with the government and protest.
“That’s the mindset of the team as well. We talk about it a lot — people are out here to share their message, and we’re here to support that.”
The research claims that more positive interactions like this one with police will lead protesters to eventually police themselves, because they won’t feel stifled, scared or under pressure by an overwhelming number of law enforcement. Placing officers in a situation where they are required to make connections with those participating in these demonstrations has also pushed back against the notion that protesters automatically become violent in crowds, something refuted by science, according to the publication.
“If you have a big police presence out there that can make people feel like they can’t share their message because they have the government standing right there watching, that’s not what we want. Our goal is to make sure that if (unsafe confrontation) starts happening, we are in a good place to keep everyone safe,” Yrigollen said. “It isn’t rocket science. You go in there, talk to people, try to figure out what’s going on, relay that information, keep people safe and be smart ... When you start boiling it down, it’s not hard — It’s OK to have these conversations safely.”
Rather than have several officers in riot gear walking around protesters, who may later see those officers as a threat, police are stationed in areas that are not always visible — so if a fight does break out in a crowd, those officers are easily able to descend on the problem, Yrigollen said. Management of the problem will go up the chain in a protest-designated command structure so supervisors will be able to make more informed decisions on police response, known as a “no surprises” approach, according to the research publication.
“Dialogue officers are getting told by command posts, ‘You’re not going to make the arrest right now,’ or ‘We’re going to stand down.’ They are there to make sure police could back out and get to a safe position,” Yrigollen said. “Dialogue officers are still police officers. They have to act, but we do not want to ever put them in a position that they get into a crowded environment and get themselves hurt.”
When officers make an arrest during a demonstration, it’s normal for other protesters to appear and ask law enforcement why. Dialogue officers, in this scenario, would approach bystanders and explain to them what is happening and why, which tends to calm people down. Getting to a protest before it begins to establish an early rapport with organizers is also another benefit to the dialogue strategy, he said, as well as a focus more on empathy and understanding during a potentially hostile interaction.
This dialogue-based strategy, in its entirety, has effectively reduced arrests at protests, the research claims.
After Spokane’s George Floyd protest on May 31, 2020, that ended with police shooting tear gas, rubber bullets and bean bags at the crowd — even hitting a 13-year-old girl in the leg who had to be carried away and spurring a downtown curfew — “it was a huge catalyst for change,” Yrigollen said.
“That’s where more training came in. A lot more. We moved to more bicycle crowd management, which is what Seattle does,” he added. “It has a lot of positives.”
The shift to bicycle crowd management, Spokane Police noticed, put protesters more at ease during their demonstrations because those officers are now seen more as active members of the community rather than outsiders waiting to make an arrest.
“That was an interesting dynamic, too. It was a complete shift of the perception from the public toward us when you’re not in full, thick riot gear, or ‘Turtle Gear’ as they call it,” Yrigollen said.
Yrigollen has been an officer for 20 years. He said he has seen things change for the better in all areas of law enforcement.
“The profession in general has progressed so much. Learning why these things matter, having those conversations — even mental health treatment and treating our own people to make sure their mental health is doing all right,” he said. “That was taboo when I first joined. You didn’t even talk about it. We have made a huge 180 in law enforcement from 20 years ago to today.”
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