NIDR Launches Community Mediation/Community Policing Program

The National Institute for Dispute Resolution in Washington, DC, three Bay Area community mediation centers, and their respective police departments have teamed up to launch a national model project for linking community mediation and community policing operations. The James Irvine Foundation and the Haas Foundation are funding the pilot project.

The goal of the program is to more effectively link local community policing efforts to community mediation resources. In so doing, the project plans to demonstrate how neighborhood and interpersonal conflicts, which are often caused by inter-group tensions, can be resolved more constructively in their communities. The project, which entered its implementation phase in March 1997, is initially focusing on training police officers on the value of conflict resolution programs and the resources of the local community mediation centers

The three community mediation centers and their police departments are the Berkeley Dispute Resolution Service, the Conciliation Forums of Oakland, and the Community Boards Program in San Francisco. The Police ExecutiveResearch Forum based in Washington, DC is also participating in the project.

For more information, local contacts for the project are:  Laura Bressler, Director, Berkeley Dispute Resolution Service, (510) 428-1811; Ilene Gusfield, Director, Conciliation Forums of Oakland (510) 763-2117; and Hilda Gutierrez-Baldoquin, Director, The Community Boards Program, San Francisco, (415) 552-1250.