June 1 Notes of the Community Action Team - Dialogue to Action

In attendance: Micah (D1), Andrew (D1), John B (P), Steve T (D4), Timothy T (D1), Chia L. (D1/2), Betsy L. (D1/11), Diane W(C/D16)., Kurt H.(P), Tong T.(D4), Nicole P.(D4/11), Roger A (D5), John S (D4), Myra S. (D1), Clara W. (D4)

Introductions – We had several new attendees for this meeting, but most people continued to be from the eastside, despite our holding the meeting on the western side of town.

Review of ground rules – we reiterated that we should feel safe to challenge each other, Another way this has been stated is that we create a safe space to be uncomfortable, that is a safe place to BE challenged.

We had a review of the work groups that were set up. There was the group to put together a history of SP Police. There is a website created by the St Paul Police Historical Society (a group of current and retired officers. This is a nonprofit organization set up to document and preserve the history of the department, including artifacts such as uniforms. They sponsor events with historically accurate uniforms and a museum exists on the second floor of the main department, although this is not generally open to the public. In the museum they have documents from statehood to present. This will be a valuable source of information for the work group. But the Action Team could also ask for other data around police activities.

There is the social media team – facebook, twitter. Andrew will initiate this work once we have some basic content to create the page.

There was the Parks group to start discussion with Parks department about entering into dialogues. Initial contact has been made to meet with Mike Hahm, Parks Director.  His office will get back to us after their department meeting this week about a meeting. A pre-meeting to plan for meeting Hahm may be necessary.

We proceeded to a review of Police guide from Everyday Democracy based on the small group discussions from last month. We had a reminder that these dialogues between city departments – police and parks – and community members are being started to find areas of mutual collaboration for creating a safer and more inclusive city. We broke into small groups again to look at the separate sessions then came back together to present our impressions of each week’s curriculum.

Session 1: We added questions to different sections to get at experiences and how they influence thoughts and behaviors. This session is meant to get to know attendees and to talk about stereotyping in both its positive and negative forms as well as how these influences interactions among people.

Session 2: This session can look at the effect of media and addressing the question of why there seems to be so much attention on the negative interactions between police and the community. How do we define opportunities to have true relationships when the media presents one picture only and this is reinforced by the militarization of the police? How do such discussions effect interactions? We should probably include discussion of the prison system. Discussion centered on what we hope becomes on-going such as, training. The question was raised about how you build trust within the community at large. Communities need to understand how police learn to be involved with communities of color – are the current methods effective? How does hiring of officers work? Is it important to have the police reflect the community and if so to what degree? We need to understand how a person’s upbringing effects interactions – how do families talk to children about the police? How does the stress of the job effect officers’ interactions with people, particularly people of color? What support is provided to police for the job they do? We need abundant opportunities to listen to other people’s views. Within this session we may need to add new views to the scenarios that reflect this line of questioning. We ultimately nee to address the disconnect between expectations and the reality of experience.

Session 3: What expectations do we have of each other? We need to watch the language of “citizens” in this curriculum. We want to make sure there is consistency of language and make some changes that make language more inviting. Describing yourself – identifying yourself (is this discussion kind of late in the process?? Is this a part of building trust? Should it come earlier?) We need to add the question of what makes communities unsafe in the first place? We also want to add to part 4 what did people learn and how did that change our thoughts?

Session 4: Look at different ways to view police and community relations and then address how we improve the existing relationships. We will want to focus on specific things; a lot of things are currently happening with the police department – how do we expand the group of people who are aware of these things? 6 views are presented – do some things need to happen – We should focus on actionable items for approach 1 – figuring out what will generate discussion. What do residents need to know to evaluate whether the police are being accountable for their behaviors? What are actions that actually fit in with the way people live? Education is necessary around how the legal system works and how the police system works. We should add a section that is about defining what is your view… The issue was raised again about how to match officers to community when we are talking about individuals with a whole range of dimensions to define ourselves along. How DOES or SHOULD the police department reflect the community? How do we get people to relate to each other?

Session 5: This session was hard to critique without having first discussed the other sessions. Instead this group focused on challenges the project will face: how do we bring people to the table (and keep them there)? There are things the police can’t do, and then education is necessary around why this is the case.  People don’t want to come talk to the police usually unless there is a high profile incident. How do we advertise to recruit for the fall sessions so that we are approaching this proactively? How do the police feel about extending a hand when it is so often rejected? What role does having a hot topic play in this recruiting? We need to define a proactive dialogue – how can we assure that this type of dialogue is attractive? Need to have a reason to come together. How do we use tragedy in this instance – do we use it? How do we highlight the positive things that happen? How do we deal with perceptions?  The important thing is to define a limited number of actionable items – 2-3 action items that are small and clear. We will also need good solid facilitation. The project needs to remain flexible to accommodate things that occur as we move forward. How many groups/discussions take place around this? (note the different levels of action possible) What do we have the capacity to handle?

We followed this with a discussion of where will we have these dialogues and when and who is going to come? We need to keep it doable and up beat. We decided that a week night is preferable to weekends, probably between 6-8p. Locations preferred were Arlington Hills, Wellstone Center and Rondo Library. We will need to see what is available and what can accommodate both break-out rooms and larger space. Locations need to be accessible by bus and other means.

Questions still to be answered - How are we representative? How do we recruit?

Facilitators will be chosen in July.

Next meeting is July 6 at 5:30p at Rondo Library.