Columbus Police dialogue officers can be identified by their blue vests. The team was created to improve police-community relationships. Credit: Courtesy of Columbus Division of Police
The Columbus Police Dialogue team works to improve police-community relationships.
At many events and protests around campus or the city, people sporting light blue vests stand out in the crowd.
Among other officers, Columbus Police dialogue officers — vested in blue — specialize in facilitating conversations and informing people of their First Amendment rights. The initiative started after a series of protests following George Floyd’s murder in 2020 and now has 53 trained officers who take part.
The dialogue officers are volunteers with other full-time jobs within the division. They must go through a 40-hour training where they study the social identity approach, read case law, learn negotiation and de-escalation skills and speak to community members, Sgt. Kolin Straub said.
“Our motto [is] honest dialogue requires honest intent,” Steven Dyer, a sergeant for the Columbus Police Department, said. “So we’re there to honestly facilitate peaceful First Amendment activity.”
The foundations of the program began in 2020 when Dyer went to Europe for 21 days with Commander Duane Mabry and another sergeant to study crowd management under Clifford Stott, a professor of social psychology at Keele University in England and an expert in crowd psychology.
Stott taught the group of officers a social identity approach to crowd management, which is “viewing crowd action as a rational, meaningful and identity-based response to social context,” Straub said.
Police departments are moving away from mob theories where crowds are seen as performing irrational and random actions influenced by ring leaders, Straub said. With this social identity approach, police can understand that there are individuals in the crowd and that the “decisions and actions that they take are rational and meaningful to them.”
“Instead of us versus them, it’s us with them — working together,” Straub said.
The First Amendment right to speech and assembly are the team’s guiding principles, Straub said.
“There’s been some controversial messages that have come to town, and we don’t have an opinion on either side of those controversial messages,” Straub said. “We support the right to say that message.”
Dyer said the dialogue team operates from within the crowd so they can speak with participants and watch in case issues arise. Their mission is not enforcement, but to act more as liaisons.
“We’re trying to ensure that everything’s peaceful and we don’t need the police to respond,” Dyer said. “Our goal is to get them to police themselves, and we’ve been able to do that here in Columbus.
David Goldberger, professor emeritus at the Moritz College of Law and an expert on free speech, said he is concerned by the police mixing in with crowds during protests or assemblies due to the chance it may discourage people from participation in the protest.
“There are a lot of unanswered questions that are very important because it is easy for this [dialogue team] to turn from something constructive into something intimidating,” Goldberger said.
Goldberger’s questions included where the officers would be stationed within an assembly, how they would communicate with one another and whether they should be talking to leadership as opposed to general members of a protest.
Straub said there are instances where participants do not want to speak with police or be near them, and the team tries to respect their request.
“There’s times when we are clearly communicated with and we’re not welcome,” Straub said. “We will be available, but we’re not there to be a part of that demonstration.”
Judson Jeffries, a professor of African American and African studies who specializes in police-community relations, said the dialogue team can act as a buffer between protesters and other law enforcement to stop the escalation of possibly dangerous situations.
“The dialogue team has to be willing to intervene when it calls for them to intervene,” Jeffries said.
The team learned a lesson about optics in early December 2022 when it was outside a scheduled “Holi-Drag Storytime” holiday-themed event featuring drag queens at First Unitarian Universalist Church and Red Oak Community School at 93 W. Weisheimer Rd. The Proud Boys, a right-wing extremist group, were protesting the event, and Dyer was seen high-fiving a member.
A woman confronted him and uploaded the video to social media, where it received heavy backlash.
Dyer said he gave high-fives to multiple participants, including LGBTQ+ supporters, to help build relationships, support people’s right to protest and stay impartial.
“It’s important to understand perception,” Dyer said. “It’s a big lesson I learned and we learned as part of the team.”
As the dialogue team learns and grows, it hopes to obtain a full-time unit to ensure familiarity within the community, Dyer said.
“A full-time unit would give us the option to consistently build relationships with our community,” Dyer said. “And that’s what it’s all about — the public are the police, the police are the public. We’re all the same.”
In March 2023, the Columbus City Council approved $90,000 of funding for the dialogue team, specifically toward a research initiative focusing on crowd management and dialogue techniques called Enable Columbus, which involves Stott.
