Better policing, safer protests? Our writer gets up close to a ‘dialogue unit.’

Episode transcript

Clay Collins:  It goes without saying that a nation of laws must also keep a focus on law enforcement. And that work, of course, requires a recognition of the constitutional rights of the citizenry, of free speech, and of lawful assembly, to name a pair that come up around protest.

Ideally, this results in a reasonably respectful dance: protestors wield their guaranteed power peacefully without intentionally antagonizing police; police assume the role of protectors of safety and keepers of some semblance of order.

But when the heat rises, how can conflict mediation hold sway over brute force?

The Monitor’s Simon Montlake went to Columbus, Ohio, to look at a thought shift there. His story was headlined: “This police unit put away its riot gear. Now it walks and talks with protesters.”

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Collins: This is “Why We Wrote This.” I’m Clay Collins. Welcome back to the show, Simon.

Simon Montlake: Nice to be here again.

Collins: So, police reform in the United States is a longrunning story that pops whenever there’s a high-profile incident. George Floyd’s killing by police in Minneapolis in 2020 is an obvious one. And then conversations surge around whether to “defund” police at one end or to harden or even militarize them at the other.

And then there are the innovators. A decade ago, the Monitor reported a story from Los Angeles on mental health clinicians taking a ride-along role. In 2020, we looked at weapons-free policing in Germany and elsewhere in Europe.

Talk, if you would, about the genesis of your story [about] one city’s dialogue units, something they’re training other cities’ police on. What drew you to this story?

Montlake: I was in Columbus, Ohio, because an organization was doing an event, this was the Strong Cities Network, which is kind of how it might sound, you know, cities from across the U.S. and also in Europe as well, getting together to discuss common problems, solutions. And the issue of law enforcement, of protest, and of political violence came up a lot. And I heard about the approach from Columbus and what they were doing with these dialogue policing.

And one of the policemen was actually at the event. He was sitting outside. He was wearing this blue vest. If you haven’t seen the pictures, they actually look a little bit like the Amazon delivery people. And I was talking to him on the sideline and he didn’t realize I was a reporter, since there were no other reporters there. And I, and at the end of it, I had to say: “Oh, by the way, um, I was thinking maybe it’d be good to do a story about you.” He’s like: “Wait, wait, wait. Uh, I can’t talk to you. You know, you have to talk to my boss.” And I said: “Don’t worry. This is really just an introduction. Like I had no idea this was going on. This sounds fascinating. I want to know more about it.”

And so, the mayor was there, mayor Andrew Ginther of Columbus, and he’s been quite a strong advocate of police reform, since 2020 and before that, but particularly with the racial justice protest there, which ended very badly. So with his support, we, myself and Alfredo Sosa, the photographer, were able to really embed with this unit and spend time with them, and come back and discuss it afterwards. We were there for a pro-Palestinian protest, but obviously this could apply across the board. It could be an Ohio State football game, if it was a big, rowdy crowd. It’s the idea of: How do you police crowds, from the inside and the outside, to the point where you are seen as facilitating and not the enemy?

Collins:  Right. You mentioned you were joined by our talented senior photographer, Alfredo Sosa, on this assignment. We’ve asked other writers about this. How does that kind of partnership affect the on the ground work? What’s the interplay like?

Montlake: The interplay is to be conscious of what the other person is doing. Alfredo is walking along with the protesters, looking to get in there, and I am drawn in another direction, maybe I want to go and talk to a bystander, or a police commander. We don’t have to be a team the whole time, but we want to be seeing what the other person sees. It’s very useful at the end of the day to sort of talk about experiences and figure out what, what we’re reporting. It is a good team effort. Alfredo and I have reported in many places and he’s always a great support, I find.

Collins: Right. And we value that input from photographers so much that we give them co-bylines on stories like yours.

Montlake: Exactly. Yes.

Collins: We’re talking about the on-the-ground part, but you’re also, back in the research trenches, presumably back home at your laptop. And, you know, you got into social psychology. I thought it was really interesting. You cited an 1895 study of crowd behavior. You look at football or soccer hooliganism, and how under the right conditions, quote, this is a source: “Fans will self-regulate and police will have little need for force. Where policing is seen as legitimate, disorder decreases.” What took you to these excellent sources that you found?

Montlake: Well, there’s one very key player in the story, and his name is Clifford Stott. He is British, and he is a professor of crowd psychology. And I must admit, I didn’t know much about the field, or even that there was a field called crowd psychology. He was actually in Columbus, they brought him over to advise on this process, because he’s one of the go-to people in Europe. He comes out of something that’s been going on for decades in academia in the UK, which has really challenged established mindset, which goes back to the 19th century, a period of, you know, tumult and democracies coming up against other sorts of governments, and a fear, the idea that the crowd, that there’s something about putting people together, that we all lose our minds. That we become these crazed people, which we perhaps wouldn’t be otherwise.

We have a sense that that can happen. And, you know, you talk to people who were at [the Capitol riot on] January 6th, [2021], and there were people there who clearly didn’t really fit the mold of the violent protester, who would break into a public building and kick people in the face.

But they do get caught up in the moment. But once you realize that within a crowd, there are different forces at play, and that you can work with them, I think that’s the key idea here, is that the crowd is not one single thing. Within the crowd, there are people that are looking for a fight. There are people that are really looking for a fight, perhaps with you as the law enforcement officer. You are the object. And there’s people who are there to legitimately make their voice heard. And how you approach them is different.

In places like Ferguson, Missouri, 2014, the police take essentially a military approach to a protest. What that can do is to signal to everyone else who’s on the other side of the barricade that the police are there as a violent occupying force. It doesn’t allow the police to play any other role.

Clifford Stott, he really cut his teeth with policing of soccer matches and soccer hooliganism across Europe. That’s how his ideas and some of these theories about crowds were put into practice.

Collins: I was thinking of the book “Among the Thugs” by Bill Buford, which chronicled that, um...

Montlake: To understand the mindset of the football hooligan, that’s a great place to start.

Collins: Yes.

Montlake: I grew up in England, and went to matches, of course. And, you know, soccer hooliganism is a perennial problem. And has been across Europe. And I think it’s interesting to think about that kind of crowd and how you police it. Because within a soccer crowd, there are people who are, you know, purely there for the spectacle, for the enjoyment. Uh, there will be people who get very involved in the tribal side of it, and perhaps are looking for some kind of confrontation. And I think within a protest movement, you have to also consider there are different strands within that as well.

I mean, we think of, you know, a soccer crowd as being purely for fun and political protest as being serious. But I think we should also take seriously the idea that any sort of crowd that we come out and take part of gives us a certain meaning. Like, to stand with a crowd has a certain power. How to manage those crowds and to make sure that everyone gets home and that there is no violence – if that’s the goal – then, I think that there’s a lot to learn from policing both events.

 At the beginning, Clay, you mentioned that there is a dance between the police and the protesters that they are policing. As I mentioned to you, it was one of the dialogue policemen I met in Columbus who helped me understand the story. His name is Sergeant Dyer.

I was asking him how he got into being a cop, and he told me that: “Well, I was actually at Ohio State University before I joined the force.” And I said to him: “What were you doing?” He said: “Well, I actually, um, I took dance.” I said: “How did you end up doing dance?” He said: “Well, I didn’t want to be in my hometown after I finished high school. And my brother was here at OSU. And I wanted to come and be a student. And I did some dance when I was in high school. So I came and auditioned and that was the easiest way for me to get in.” And I said to him: “Well. Do all your colleagues on the police force know that you are a dance major?” And he said: “I don’t think so.”

Collins: Do you happen to know if it was modern dance or ballroom?

Montlake: I didn’t ask.

Collins: Training in de-escalation and crowd dynamics is rare, you write. What does your reporting suggest about why that is, given that there’s this growing body of academic knowledge and that there’s evidence that it can work?

Montlake: I think there is evidence it can work, and the evidence will filter across and upwards. But within the U.S., you don’t have, you know, a unified training force or curriculum or academy for police forces. There are thousands of police forces. Each state, each locality might do it differently. So even if you do have a new approach, it’s quite hard for that approach to get out there. Countries in Europe, where you have far more national police and training and standards, it’s much easier, once an idea is adopted, for it to be spread and practiced. Now that could of course run the other way. A bad idea can also get implemented.

Collins: Right.

Montlake: I talked to an academic last year who spent a year training to be in a police academy in a couple of different states. And one of the things that she found is that the training really emphasized the idea of the “warrior,” of the policemen out there in a hostile environment, and what they had to do to survive. And that de-escalation, even if they had aspects of the course which talked about it, the trainers who, you know, often former cops themselves, some of these people had dealt with violent situations, dangerous people.

And so they came back always to this idea of, almost, do or die. You have to be out there, ready to use your weapon. And, you know, part of that is because it is a country with widespread use of guns and violence. But there is still something quite fundamental there to the mindset of what that police officer is supposed to be doing. And a “dialogue policeman” is, they’re also armed. They’re also ready to respond. But their whole approach and mindset and relationship to the people they’re policing is not the warrior mindset.

Collins: Right.

Montlake: That seems to be quite key to their approach.

Collins: It’s an interesting term. It’s kind of an ennobling word, and it implies that someone is on the side of justice, which of course is the ideal.

I want to talk about the other side. The trigger side. And we live in a world of hot issues. From the Middle East, as you led with in your story, to the rights of would-be immigrants. A lot of people marching now about that. There are politically provocative acts. I think about the 2022 Proud Boys marches, which you mentioned, that can trigger counter marches and protests.

And I just want to kind of bring this to the current time, because you wrote in your story, and this was pre inauguration, you wrote: “The incoming Trump administration seems likely to have reservations about dialogue-based crowd management, given his first administration and his views of street protests. He may push American policing in the direction of more, not less, coercive crowd control.” So I wonder, what does your reporting tell you about how dedicated, for instance, Columbus is to trying to mitigate the police citizen conflicts, no matter what happens?

Montlake: We do now have the new president in power. The civil rights division of the Department of Justice, which is often very involved with police reform, the appointments that President Trump has made, those are people who clearly, you know, are not going to be pushing in the same direction. I think we know the direction of travel from the top.

In terms of Columbus, what I found was interesting is that you clearly have an experiment that’s gone quite well. They’ve got data to show that their approach is working in terms of: When we take this approach to protests, we are seeing less instances of violence, we’re making fewer arrests, we’re calling in backup less often, there’s less disruption to the citizenry.

But it hasn’t really, I don’t believe that it’s really got the full support of the police department. Now they tell me that it’s a priority, but then when I look at their actions, for example, there was a proposal to make this a permanent fixture of the department. It’s still not got that backing. Now, I don’t know if that resistance is just organizational lack of manpower, other priorities, you know, a city which is dealing with homicide and other issues.

And I suspect that’s often the case that, you know, what you see with law enforcement, with any institution really, is you have the people that come in, are all gung ho about making the changes, and they’ll drive it. They might get some support. But it’s taking that forward, because some of the people who are involved in the beginning, they might be reassigned, they may move on. And it’s how do you keep that idea going. So, um, there are some internal questions there about Columbus, but I think that the idea that it represents and the approach it represents is not going to die completely, because there are other police departments that are studying it, and maybe they will bring it forward.

Collins: Other strong cities. Thanks, Simon, for another compelling piece, and for coming back on to talk about your work.

Montlake: Great to be with you, Clay.

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Collins: And thanks to our listeners. You can find more, including our show notes with a link to the story that we discussed in this podcast at CSMonitor.com/WhyWeWroteThis. This episode was hosted by me, Clay Collins, and produced by Jingnan Peng. Mackenzie Farkus is also a producer on this show. Our sound engineers were Jeff Turton and Alyssa Britton, with original music by Noel Flatt. Produced by The Christian Science Monitor, copyright 2025.