9. Applying the Framework

I am sitting in a coffeehouse in the town where I live in Colorado, next to several people who are in animated , sometimes heated, discussion about a rising controversy with local police. The town's newspaper has been filled these past two months with letters to the editor deploring recent policing actions. The police seem to have decided that speeding and rolling stops require much more attention.

At the table next to me the voices rise as one person details her recent experience of getting a ticket for speeding. She explains that she had not been stopped in 20 years, and she is convinced that the current drive is just a ploy to fill the town coffers. She concludes with a lament about the loss of citizenship in what used to be a friendly town. A few weeks ago a protest march was organized on Main Street, followed by a public forum to air grievances and to decide on the next steps.

This is not the first time controversy has arisen around the police. Four years ago the main complaint in the papers was that the police were too slow in responding to calls for help, especially in an area where out-of-state people were starting illegal campfires. Last year the letters to the editor carried wide-ranging views about police personnel issues and what should or should not be done about a recent firing. I overheard one friend of the police comment, “Some say they move too slow. Some say they are too worried about speed. They must be about right.” That remark was not well received by the person who had just gotten a ticket.

In the stories at the coffeehouse, the protest march slogans, and the letters to the editor we can see the elements discussed in the preceding chapters. How would a transformational view look at this controversy? What might a platform for conflict transformation look like in response? Let's imagine, in Little Book fashion, what our lenses would pick up and suggest.

1. What do our lenses bring into focus?

Episode lenses suggest:

• A recent time frame—the past few months—has seen the rise of controversy, and increased community attention to and tension around the police, and this needs to be addressed.

• The content is about specific kinds of actions and behaviors. In this episode, it is about tickets for speeding and a pattern of stopping certain kinds of people.

• The relational grievance has to do with how individuals have been treated when stopped.

Epicenter lenses suggest:

• This is not the first time the community and police have had controversies. There is a repeated pattern of episodes on a variety of different content issues.

• Relational patterns are expressed in the way individuals and police have interacted over time.

• Structural patterns are expressed in how the community views the role, responsibilities, and expectations of policing, and how police and town officials view the responsibility of providing security.

• Identity patterns are expressed in how citizens, governing officials, and police view the town, the kind of town each wants, and how policing fits the image of who we were in the past and who we want to be in the future.

• Interdependence, and power patterns embedded in the relationships, are expressed in expectations and frustrations, fears and hopes about how citizens and governing structures relate, make decisions, and include (or exclude) citizens in decisions that affect their lives.