Wash. Police Force's 'Dialogue Unit' Works with Protesters to Ensure Peaceful Demonstrations

By Alexandra Duggan

Source The Spokesman-Review, Spokane, Wash.

They don't look like the other police officers.

Wearing light blue uniform shirts under black vests, they appeared noticeably different than other police wearing the standard black uniform, as they intermingled with the thousands of people marching along Spokane streets during Saturday's "No Kings" protest.

When crowds began marching down Garland and north on Monroe on Saturday, the groups of two officers in blue began walking with them. They would occasionally engage in small conversation with the protesters, speak to the organizers about their plan or communicate to other officers to tell them what roads to block to stop traffic so demonstrators could safely pass.

Standing at the end of the march on Monroe Saturday was a young girl, holding a sign and chatting with others about whether or not she thought the police were going to deploy smoke canisters or tear gas at protesters like she had seen on television in other states. As she was talking, an officer in blue passed her.

The two chatted for a bit before the girl reached out her hand across the street's yellow line, where the officer was standing on the other side to observe traffic. He smiled and gave her a high-five.

She skipped away and joyfully commented to herself in a sing-song voice: "I love those guys."

"Those guys" — the officers wearing light blue among the crowds at protests in Spokane — are members of the department's tactical team designated to manage large crowds.

But they are also part of the department's evolving "dialogue unit," a group specifically trained to engage with protesters and organizers. It's a new strategy the department rolled out in April.

Instead of the typical way people might see police at protests, Spokane Police's "dialogue" officers focus on mixing into the protest by establishing positive connections, building rapport and talking with participants, helping people exercise their First Amendment rights.

"That's the mindset of the team as well. We talk about it a lot," Spokane Police Lt. Kyle Yrigollen said in April after returning from a dialogue policing conference. "People are out here to share their message, and we're here to support that."

The strategy

The method, a practice that is beginning to make waves across local police departments, has seen benefits by filling needs the department had wrestled with for years.

"The biggest gap that it has filled is our communication with our local activist groups," said Officer Karl Richardson, who led a dialogue policing-based training at Gonzaga University on Oct. 7. Officers are reaching out to organizers well in advance of their event and communicating with them consistently during the event to maintain peace. It's also led to a much better professional relationship with local community activists.

"I think it's helpful for those that are protesting and those that are practicing their First Amendment rights to know who's showing up as a law enforcement presence," Richardson told The Spokesman-Review during his training session. "There's a realm of understanding, or a common ground of at least knowing each other that wasn't there before."

Dan Lambert, an organizer with Spokane Indivisible, has been working with the dialogue team for a few months.

"We are very grateful," Lambert said after Saturday's protest. "They really understand folks who want to exercise their First Amendment rights...They have been wonderful to work with, and we have been talking about what we could do better next time."

Police in Columbus, Ohio, developed its dialogue unit after the murder of George Floyd sparked the Black Lives Matter protests of 2020. Their department also was the first to help kickstart Spokane's dialogue-policing strategy. Or in the way Richardson puts it, "de-escalation before escalation."

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 counter protesters to establish rapport, a publication from Police Chief Magazine states.

The method also discourages police from showing up in "riot gear" at protests and silently watching protesters with little to no engagement with them, because demonstrators could see this as a threat or a technique to stifle their First Amendment expressions, the research states.

Choosing to instead engage with demonstrators in a more welcoming way with less intimidating and clearly identifiable uniforms will instead lead to protesters policing themselves. This dialogue-based strategy has effectively reduced arrests at protests, the research claims.

These types of connections also refute the common assumption that protesters are automatically violent and seek chaos and disorder in crowds. Data from the Armed Conflict Location and Event Data Project shows that despite the notion the Black Lives Matter protests of 2020 were mostly violent, 93 % of them remained peaceful.

The "No Kings" protest in Spokane on Saturday yielded zero arrests by 4 p.m., the time the event was scheduled to end. Despite some of the Trump Administration's top leaders calling the scheduled protest a "Hate America rally" or referring to those within the Democratic party that oppose President Donald Trump's policies as "terrorists" and "violent criminals," the protests were also mostly peaceful nationwide, even in cities that have been a focal point for Trump's ire.

As the day went on, an estimated 7 million people showed up at more than 2,700 "No Kings" rallies in cities and towns, according to reporting from NBC. Around 10,000 people showed up in Spokane.

The effectiveness

Richardson, who was one of the dialogue officers on duty at the time of Spokane's mass protest, said he was satisfied with the outcome. Protesters, some of whom had felt nervous around police before, were engaging with them more frequently. Some would walk up to them and smile, joke or laugh. Interactions with them were "overwhelmingly positive," he added.

Other officers nearby commented they were continually approached by demonstrators, some of whom shook their hands or handed them stickers. They couldn't recall a tumultuous or unsettling interaction from the afternoon.

"It was a great, peaceful event," Richardson said on Saturday. "We wanna keep things safe, and today was a good day for that...The organizations here did a great job."

Peace and Justice Action League of Spokane police liaison Jim Leighty told The Spokesman-Review at the rally that the communication with police officers was fluid and going well. Everyone was working together and communicating, he said.

"The idea is to keep everybody safe," Leighty commented during the march. "It's a large crowd, and everyone's exercising their rights."

A key strategy within the dialogue policing method is to connect and communicate with organizers enough to where police will not have to intervene. Lambert said afterward that the police's effort helped organizers maintain the crowds and do the de-escalation of any potential conflicts themselves.

"The protesters aren't as intimidated," Lambert said. "I can let people know why (the dialogue officers) are there. For some, it has been an icebreaker."

In one instance, Richardson said, there were a few people observed at the protest who showed up clad in helmets, gloves and vests. Police asked organizers to check with those people to see if they were planning any demonstration out of the norm that officers should be aware of. After organizers had a conversation with the group, all was well, Richardson said.

While there's no specific way to measure the dialogue method's success, there may be a strategy.

In early October, when Richardson was leading the dialogue training for their tactical officers, he noted that sometimes dialogue-policing's effectiveness is observed based on whether communication with someone whose behavior is escalating inside a peaceful gathering has fallen in "temperature" following an interaction with police. Sometimes, it takes hours of work to get there.

When an impromptu protest erupted on June 11 following federal immigration's detainment of two legal asylum-seekers, the dialogue officers weren't in their typical blue uniforms. But officers did their best to implement the same strategy they would have if the protest had been preplanned, Richardson said.

"Just because dialogue wasn't deployed in their blue shirts, a number of us practiced dialogue principles and efforts throughout the entirety of the event," Richardson said.

While upwards of 30 people were arrested on suspicion of unlawful assembly, there were many more instances where de-escalation was used and proven to be effective, he added.

"Multiple times, that (strategy) was able to influence people set on being arrested to actually rejoining the crowd and peacefully participating in their First Amendment activities," Richardson said. "I try not to gauge our success in the deployment of a conversational tactic (because) it's very hard to gauge what the result could have been or would have not been."

He also watches his body camera footage after a protest to determine how many people, either looking for a confrontation with an officer or not, he spoke with. If the conversation doesn't end pleasantly, Richardson said his typical response is, "Alrighty, enjoy your First Amendment activity."

"Obviously, there's no magical potion that's going to stop any sort of police confrontation for the history of the world. If we knew that potion, we would all employ it, and none of us would deal with it, and it'd be awesome. Everybody would be happy," Richardson said. "But it is a tool in our toolbox. I think we're using it wisely."

But maybe the success, Richardson said, is also measured in public perception. And it's a noticeable change.

"We've seen an overwhelming, positive reception of our presence," Richardson said. "Not only at events, but an overwhelmingly welcomed reception of our communication before the event."

While the air was cold and brisk on Saturday and officers walked miles in their shoes — one officer commenting offhandedly he should have bought a better, more comfortable pair — most of the six were still smiling and laughing by the end of it.

"We are very grateful," Lambert said as he stood beside protesters, waving their flags over the sidewalks on Division Street. "I couldn't ask for a better relationship."

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