Bringing Sides Together: Community-Based Complaint Mediation

Police departments worldwide are facing the challenge of building community trust in an environment of controversial shootings and political polarization. In particular, some community members believe that police officers are racially or otherwise biased in exercising their law enforcement powers. Biased policing complaints, however, are very difficult to investigate and resolve because doing so requires an understanding of what the officer was thinking or his or her motivation for the enforcement or investigative action.