Miguel Hernández -- Part 2 of 3

Miguel Hernández was a conciliator with CRS from 1971-1977 and then again from 1988-1995.

There are 3 parts of this interview and a summary: Part 1, Part 2 and Part 3 and The Summary This is Part 2.

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Bill Froehlich (00:00:01): Well, good morning, Miguel. It is May 10th, 2022. This is part two of the oral history segment with Miguel Hernandez. And of course this is the civil rights oral history project revisited 20 years, 20 some years after the first edition. And I'm here with conciliator Miguel Hernandez. So thank you Miguel. To start this morning Miguel indicated he wanted to make some corrections to the dates and names and some other issues from his ... from the first part of the oral history. So Miguel I'll give the floor to you.

Miguel Hernández (00:00:39): I will also send these to you by email. I began working for the federal government with the US Office of Economic Opportunity which was within the Executive Office of the President, which sounds grandiose, but it wasn't really that grandiose. I started there on March 27th, 1967 and I was there for four years and then I joined the CRS on April 5th, 1971. And then I was there for six years. And then subsequently in 1977 I found a job with the New York City Commission on Human Rights as its Executive Director. I was there for four years from August 1st of 1977 to December of 1981. In reaching that period I was there for about seven years and then I came back to CRS in 1988 on October 11th, 1988 and I was there for seven years. And then in 1995, I was RIF'ed a reduction in force and I landed a job with the DEA and I was there for two years from 1996 to 1998, September 14th when I retired. So that's basically, you know, the chronology.

Bill Froehlich (00:02:38): That's really clear. So I appreciate that. And that's the perfect point to highlight that. Is there anything else you wanted to highlight?

Miguel Hernández (00:02:48): No. I just wanna say that traveling around different agencies like I forgot to mention that I was with the Lent Executive Program which was run by the U.S. Civil Service Commission and they lent me out to various nonprofit agencies. So all in all, I picked up a lot of information I learned a lot by working with these different agencies. And I saw how they operated that was so different from the Community Relations Service. So that's basically, that was what I took away from my entire federal career. So what I would like to do if you don't mind is I'd like to answer the questions you had because I think the answers are pretty short and then we can go back to the street mediation. Okay?

Bill Froehlich (00:03:58): That sounds

Miguel Hernández (00:03:59): Does that make sense

Bill Froehlich (00:04:00): Yeah, that sounds perfect.

Miguel Hernández (00:04:01): Okay.

Bill Froehlich (00:04:01): And for the reader or for the viewer, I've of course sent, Miguel many, the questions in advance, and so I'll, we'll go through the questions in essentially chronological order and we'll go from there. So, Miguel what we wanna do right now then is look broadly at a quote, typical case, knowing of course that no case at CRS is typical. You've already described an array of cases that were atypical, whether it was the Texaco judge referred case or whether it was your case, in cases in Caribbean countries, connected ... down there or your case with the Jewish community in the New York City borough of Brooklyn. There's so much diversity there. It's quite quite incredible. So if you could though think of that typical case, and can you identify the type of roadblocks you might encounter in your efforts to work with parties effectively and how you might try to overcome or surpass those roadblocks?

Miguel Hernández (00:05:13): Well, the major roadblock and I think maybe other people in the agency experience, this was, people were always, at least initially suspicious of you. Maybe it was the fact that you worked for the Justice Department and they tended to confuse us with the FBI and other law enforcement agencies. So you had a difficult time. I had a difficult time anyway, overcoming that initial suspicion. And basically the only way that I found was effective for me was, to find somebody in the community who perhaps could vouch for you in some way, either they had known about CRS in the past, or, you know, they weren't conspiracy minded, you know, conspiracy oriented types. And you could really explain to them what CRS and particularly the fact that anything they said to you that they said was confidential you were bound duty bound to keep it confidential. People didn't always believe that, of course, but, by repetition, I think it ultimately came over and people were more open to talking to you. So that's the that I found to be the major roadblock. The other one was that you really didn't have at hand most of the time anyway, the resources that you really needed. You know, these, a lot of these cases where there were street mediation, or table mediation, they were complicated cases and you needed really needed more than one person involved. You needed at least a person that you could bounce ideas off of and say, know what I wanna do this, what do you think? And that kind of stuff, I mean, you could do, you could call back somebody and so forth, but they weren't with you.

Miguel Hernández (00:07:45): Okay. So lack of resources in that sense was very critical. We also were able to solve that from time to time because at one point the agency was what we called programmatic. And this was one of the great ideas that, that Ben Holman. I think he was the second or third director of CRS, I forget. But he had come from the media, he was a reporter for a Chicago paper, and he had achieved a you know, some level of ... notoriety I wanna call it, he, I wouldn't call it that. But, you know, he was, he was a known person and because he had reported on the Black Panthers back ... in the day, very, very early on. And I think he won a Pulitzer Prize for his reporting. I ... I'm not positive about that, but he, he would know anyway then decided that what we really needed to do is to have subject matter experts in the agency in various.

Miguel Hernández (00:09:00): I think I'm, I may be repeating myself, but anyway, he said he wanted to have a housing person with housing background, law enforcement, economic development, you know, media relations and some other areas because he felt, and you know, I think rightly so that the root of the problem really didn't, wasn't really the fact that a police officer had shot and killed a black person or whatever, whatever misconduct there was that sparked the disturbance or the demonstration, or the problem was really much deeper than that. He felt it was a lack of resources, you know? So he wanted to get somebody who could help go through that. Yes, you had to deal with the police officer or whether they, the spark was and, and try to put that out or dam it or redirect it so forth. But you had to get to the, the lack of resources in the community to address problems in media. For example, since he was a media person, he gave us people who are knowledgeable about the media and how the media works and what's the media needed, needed from us and needed to, and needed to do in the community and how they should report on how minorities were being portrayed in the media.

Miguel Hernández (00:10:33): So because almost every story about a media person in some kind of situation was a negative, you know, he was arrested, you know, he or she did this, that, and the other thing, and it could have been true that the person did so forth, but it would then generalized okay to include the whole community. So the very, things that were reported about the white community doing wonderful things was reported, but the wonderful things that minorities, Hispanic blacks, etcetera did were not reported. So he wanted us to ... get to correct that, that problem, because that was, he saw that as one of the problems. Okay. He was a quirky person. I mean, quirky in a good sense. He sent out memos to the staff about this, that, and the other thing, but he didn't send out memos. He sent out golden rods.

Bill Froehlich (00:11:50): What do you mean by golden rod? I don't know that term.

Miguel Hernández (00:11:52): And it came, the memo got, came to you on a bright yellow piece of paper. Okay. Which meant like, this is goddamn important, you better listen to this, or you better do this. I want you to do this that and the other thing. So quirky, he did a lot of things that were different, but anyway ...

Bill Froehlich (00:12:14): I'm sorry. I better stop you about the golden rod. Is that your term? Is that like staff and CRS?

Miguel Hernández (00:12:19): Yes, that was a term that he used.

Bill Froehlich (00:12:21): He used it. Okay.

Miguel Hernández (00:12:23): Yes. Golden rod. Okay. So ... we laughed at it from time to time, you know, here come to another golden rod and so forth. But anyway, that was his way of getting the message across to you. He didn't, he didn't get a lot of 'em, but you know, when you got it, you knew that this was something that was bugging him and that he wanted you to work on or do listen to it. So, okay. Most of it had to do with case work, not disciplinary stuff, not you'd screwed up or anything like that. You know, it was, this is a ... thing that I think is good for us to do, and that's the way, at least that's the way I took it. Anyway. Others can speak for themselves. Anyhow, getting back just for a moment to the media thing, and I'll sort of end with that.

Miguel Hernández (00:13:17): He also had us looking at, for example, at the licenses, the broadcasting licenses of stations, TV stations, radio stations, and so forth. And the idea was that ... we should see if these were challengeable, you know, that every few years of stations, media license would expire and they'd have to renew and all this other stuff. So, we had to look at that and, you know, with the media person and see, what was it, was it a proper thing to do, to challenge the license? So for not for us challenge it, but for a community group to challenge was this a viable tool, you know, people, you know, community groups to demonstration petitions, you know, a whole variety of things to try to correct a situation. So this was one more kind of thing that a community might consider doing if it was appropriate to situation.

Miguel Hernández (00:14:26): So that's what I'm saying. He wanted to get that to the root of the problem and provide people with the tools themselves to solve that problem. Okay. The challenge licenses never came from us and we didn't, you know, and we never suggest it to a group that they do that. But if the ... issue arose that we're not being fairly treated in the media, okay, you gotta look at the media, there's a whole other issues. You know, like media has deadlines, they have to meet, they have to, in some way, fashion or other, you know, they have sponsors, you know, TV station have sponsors, radio, say newspapers rely on, on advertising, you know, so we had to know what the constraints are for media and ... make the community aware of those constraints. It was very key. Anyway, he did that in a whole lot of different other areas, but that was, that was why I thought he was, even though, I always considered myself, obviously not a subject matter expert, but a specialist like in the medical field, I ... you would call me a general practitioner. Okay. Anyway, that was that.

Bill Froehlich (00:15:56): Well, that's really interesting that this idea to bring in subject matter experts, to kind of help you get through some of the staffing issues and to provide those experts perhaps across the country or regionally. So you mentioned that you mentioned folks being initially suspicious ... as roadblocks. With respect to the initial suspicion, you found someone to vouch for you and you used that confidentiality ... to highlight, look, I'm not gonna share this with the FBI or other parts of DOJ, were there any other hurdles you wanted to address?

Miguel Hernández (00:16:37): Well, if you, if I went into a situation where it was a Hispanic community involved, as an example, the establishment felt that because I was also Hispanic, obviously Hernandez or Hernández to pronounce it properly, is of the same ethnic group as our opponents, therefore he is going to favor them. So when you get to the aspect of neutrality, the establishment was suspicious of you as well. Okay. Or at least had a, obviously they would be polite and so forth. But it, in some ways it came across that you were not really considered a neutral, you were considered to be with them also because you basically, you know, came from the civil rights aspect in a way you were not neutral. Okay. So, that's something that has to be overcome time to time and how you maintain your, your, integrity sort if I can use that word, you know, as a minority person, and not .. and when they, if somebody says something like the typical one says, oh, you are different. You're special. You're ... an educated one was a comment I got many times. Okay. So that was another problem that you had to ... sensitize yourself to, in a sense that you had to say, okay, this, I know what he is trying to say, and just basically let it go. But sometimes you had to address it full on, I mean, which is rare. But anyway, that was ... a continual problem being from a minority group being from this is what they, they believed to be were you were investigating them. Okay. You were, you were part of the FBI or the, whatever it was, even with, even with police chiefs and ... other people that they were simply not, let me put it this way, not educated about what CRS was and you have to, you have to reeducate them.

Bill Froehlich (00:19:40): So can we go back to the example where you're trying to balance your integrity as a representative of the Hispanic or a Latin, Latinx now Latinx community it might be called and your neutrality as a CRS mediator. Can you give me an example of where you had to address those aggressions? You know, I think, I was thinking now we often talk about microaggressions, but what, what you talked about is you're ... one of the educated ones someone's saying that. That's just an aggression, right? That's a racist statement. And sometimes you, in your role, you let, you would let that go because your role is to focus on the tension in the community, not on your role in it. But how, when did it cross that line and what would you do?

Miguel Hernández (00:20:34): Well I think the most example that, it happened fairly frequently, but one of the major ones that I do recall at the moment was the, you know, when I was working with the Hasidim in Williamsburg, you know, this was a battle between Puerto Ricans on the one hand and Hasidim on the other. So being, Puerto Rican, principally, actually born in Puerto Rico, Puerto Rican parents and grandparents, and going back to the 1850s there, yeah, I had to overcome that initially. And ... things were said to me, but ... basically I had Jewish allies on the other side too, you know, who were able to speak to me and say, oh, Miguel is fair. Okay, Miguel, you know, something words along that line. And we strove initially to say, look, I'm a neutral third party intervener. Big words, and I said, but that, what that really means is that I'm gonna be fair. I'm going to try to judge, you know, I look, I have feelings. Okay. I have feelings, I would say, but I'm a professional. I worked for the U.S. Department of Justice.

Miguel Hernández (00:22:15): And what we're taught is to be fair and to act as a fair person. Okay. So that's how we got into it. But yeah, maybe when you got back to the hotel or where it was, and you talk to everybody and say, well, that SOB said this to me, you know? Yeah. And you get it off your chest that way. So

Bill Froehlich (00:22:43): Really, really helpful. Thank you. Yeah. So I wanna loop back to the media. You were talking about, you were talking about how you had a media specialist, you had, you were investigating, looking at licenses, so that potentially you could not tell the community activists what to do, but just have ask them inquire what have you looked into with respect media? What, were there any other roles that the media played in situations commonly both in terms of making it better and making it worse? You talked about the articles that only featured the positive of the white majority community. But in the moment, were there positive roles the media played? Did you have partners in the media and were there times when then media ...

Miguel Hernández (00:23:30): No, I didn't. I mean, I tried to be as friendly as possible and by friendly, I mean, you know, genial, you know, polite, that kind of stuff to reinforce the neutrality aspects of being a ... mediator or conciliator whatever you wanna call it. So that was ... I had a lot of contact with media, but what they were trying to get at was the sensational aspects. You know, the whole thing about if it bleeds, it leads. And I understood that, you know, that this is what they want to get at, but that I was bound to the neutral aspect of CRS and to the ... code of ... omerta silence. You know, confidentiality is the real word and I even had a situation once where upstate New York, several black kids were arrested and at a local college and a whole black kids and the whole scandal arose, because they were led into the court in chains, like, because this ... is upstate ... this is New York state. This is not, not the south, you know, and of course that was raised a lot of eyebrows, particularly in the media.

Miguel Hernández (00:25:42): So I was talking to the community and the press really wanted to emphasize that and I understand why, okay. But again, I said, I'm a neutral, I'm here to help the community and ... the broader community, meaning when I said community, not just the black community, bring about positive changes. So, but they kept, they kept asking. And in one case, even the judge, I believe it was the judge in that case. No, I know it was a judge in that particular case said wanted me to testify in court, you know, and, threatened that if I didn't testify, I would go to jail, which I could go to jail if I said, if I said anything. So I had to call, this is the one instance where headquarters helped me. You know, they said, Mr. Hernández can't testify, you know, and in fact, they said to me, he says, make sure you take a toothbrush with you when you go to jail. Anyway, so yeah, neutrality was ... A hard thing to ... and keeping things confidential was a very difficult issue at times, particularly when the press was involved.

Bill Froehlich (00:27:11): Yeah. That's really fascinating that a judge was potentially gonna throw you in jail if you didn't testify. And DOJ had, that was a state judge, I assume?

Miguel Hernández (00:27:23): No. He was a, it was a local judge, local, you know, small town, small county, upstate New York. It was a rural area. So not that that there's anything wrong with that, but that's, that's who he was. That's what, where it was.

Bill Froehlich (00:27:41): That makes sense. That makes sense. So I, you, I wanna talk a little bit about goals and settlement. When you entered into a community and were working with the community, were you working to settle the question that was presented for a limited, for a settlement, a written settlement that just addresses one particular issue in the community, the issue you were called there to go to, or were you trying to secure larger systemic change in the community?

Miguel Hernández (00:28:14): I believed, I tried to address systemic changes first and foremost because you had to get to the root of the problem. Okay. The root of the problem. And you had to get to get the community to say, this is really the problem. Yes. A white officer acted improperly, or, you know, did whatever he, you know, he did, that was not good. And you say well, what was it behind that, you know, what is really, you know, going on? And then you would get a whole history of what happened in this community before, you know, these disturbances or ... demonstrations didn't start the day the incident happened. Okay. And that was kind of a thing that was drilled into me by a guy named Bob Lamb, who worked with us in ... he was in the Northeast office where I was Captain Bob Lamb he was a former, police captain of Atlantic City. And, anyway, so yeah, I ... and the fact that the agency was building on that programmatic aspect of ... it was also part of that too, to look further into the problem.

Miguel Hernández (00:30:01): So settlement could mean a whole bunch of different things, not necessarily a written agreement between the parties, but, you know, sometimes it did, but in my experience, rarely, most of it was that the police department or, or the municipality or school superintendent or whoever it was took a specific action that came up as a complaint by the community of things that should be done. This could have included, for example, the establishment of a police review board, the establishment of a human rights commission or committee, the courts taking action against a real estate industry, local industry, to institute non-discriminatory policies. So that, those kinds of things generally, or a meeting, you know, a series of ongoing meetings with the, between the chamber of commerce and the minority community to address things like jobs and so forth. So it wasn't always a written document that came in, you know, later on, but initially it was, they should do this. One of the things that was often recommended was sensitivity training, you know, of the police department and generally could be others, but, and so we went forth and we were conducting the training and everything else. But as the years went by I came to the conclusion I don't know if others did, but my conclusion was, you know, this ... is not really effective.

Miguel Hernández (00:32:38): Because you forced everybody in that police department, not you, but generally, the chief would say, oh, okay, everybody's gonna go through sensitivity training. Now, Mr. Hernandez has recommended this to us and you are gonna do it. And most of the cops would sit there with their arms folded, you know, they would listen, they would be polite, you know, it wasn't any, but you know, the guy who did the crime, if I can call it that, you know, put quotes around the crime, who did the thing, he would, he might have been there too, but why would everybody else in there and because, and why was this mandatory? Why did everybody have to be there? You know, you took 'em on different shifts and all that stuff. And was this really getting regardless, but was this really getting, was it changing attitudes? Was it making cops as an example or teachers if it was in a school case, less racist, more sensitive, those are the questions I was asking myself.

Miguel Hernández (00:33:59): My impression was that wasn't, that really wasn't what was happening. You know, maybe in some instances I was preaching to the choir. Okay. Since everybody was there, including the black cops, you know, so a lot, I mean, our training was for free, but a lot of communities hired consultants. It became a whole industry, almost of people going out and preaching sensitivity training. So anyway, I don't know what the really get back to your question, but, sensitivity training was one of the things in our ... toolkit so to speak. And it's sort of like, you know, we went into Afghanistan to train the Afghans, how to fight really. I mean, these people have been fighting for thousands of years. They probably know more about fighting. They could teach us something, you know what I'm saying? So, training was a ... tool that was used and I don't know about anybody else speaking for myself only I came to the conclusion after a while that it was not, you know, if they told me to do it, I would do it. Okay. And say, no, I'm not gonna do it, but maybe my heart wasn't in it anymore after a while.

Bill Froehlich (00:35:38): So I hear you on the training. And sounds like a lot of the training was maybe the implication of it was a one time training and how would you make, how do you make an impact on the people that need to have an impact made, not the choir, but the people who aren't in the choir, how do you make that happen?

Miguel Hernández (00:35:59): Well, I think, well, there isn't any one way as, you know, the civil rights division and the FBI has arrested a lot of cops and lately a lot of 'em are going to jail and the juries are not buying their stories and so forth. So that's making an impact. Okay. It's coercive impact, but maybe that's making an impact on how police act. I don't know for sure. But all the lawsuits have been brought in the past, the cop doesn't pay for it, right. The guy who kills somebody and, you know, doesn't pay for it really, he gets supported by the, the union and so forth. So I think maybe what's making an impact is the actual arrest and, and so forth. And what needs to happen perhaps is that the immunity, that personal immunity that some police officers have, you know, uh, and, you know, maybe, maybe that's, you know, if I run over and kill a person, you know, ultimately yes, I have insurance. Maybe cops should have insurance, but you know, I'm held to account even though I've already, you know, but anyway

Miguel Hernández (00:37:29): No, thank you.

Miguel Hernández (00:37:32): Sorry.

Bill Froehlich (00:37:32): Is there anything? No, you're okay. Is there anything in your role as CRS that you at CRS that you found more effective than delivering the training? I think that was the, that was the ... that's a better question. And I think what I'm more interested in. From a CRS perspective, what is more effective in making that culture change?

Miguel Hernández (00:37:55): Well, one of the things, culture change is also another thing is, you know, communities they want justice. I understand that, you know, and rightly so, but law enforcement also has a culture. Okay. So, but we never talked about that. I think we could have done more on that area saying, here's how police operate and why they operate this way. Not that it would bring necessarily bring changes in the community, but it would at least make people think about how they're going to get redress. What is effective for changing police behavior? And it has to start with both sides and you do an mediation, both sides, teaching both sides, how to, what the thinking is on the other side and why they're saying certain things and doing certain things. Okay. So culture is not limited.

Miguel Hernández (00:39:10): Training should not be limited simply to training the police to be more sensitive, but instead helping the community understand, understand what goes, how the police and why they think that way. You know, police officers generally come from police backgrounds. Their father was a cop. Their grandfather may be a cop and so forth. They live in a very closed in society themselves. They associate with other cops, they go to parties, they drink with other cops and all and so forth and so on. So they develop a certain ... brotherhood, if you will, is a term that is used among themselves. And so we need communities to understand that, but also not necessarily in a negative way, but in a positive way. And this will help them, I think, formulate their approach to the resolution of problem a little bit more effectively. Not that you say, oh, we are gonna love the cops. The cops are wonderful. No, no, that's not it, but we understand what's going on here, why this happens and how can we change that viewpoint? It can't be done in a training session for cops. Okay. That's a short, it's a short term thing, whether I do it, or, you know, a consultant does it, it takes ... a while. It's that trust building process that has to happen on some level.

Bill Froehlich (00:40:57): And have you been involved in communities that have set up such a process to develop that trust, to develop that information sharing between police and community?

Miguel Hernández (00:41:10): Well, I identified this couple husband and wife who were actors, professional actors, and, you know, they been on Broadway and off Broadway, you know, that kind of stuff. And they were also former police officers and they developed this training thing where they had scenarios and one scenarios was like a traffic stop. You know, that a lot of these disturbances get set off at traffic stop situations. So ... they had a little consulting firm that had other actors, so they would get people to play, or they play themselves either policeman or driver in a typical road stop, you know, highway stop, whatever it was. Excuse me, a second. I need to put on another light here, dark in this room. I don't know. Okay I hope that's a better picture. Anyway, they, we work with them. We did some training even for the police department on instances where another thing that sets off disturbances and whatnot, police go in, somebody's acting strangely, a family member calls the police department, the police department respond. And for one reason or another known or unknown, the person that was supposed to be helped winds up dead or bad or badly injured, you know, so again, there are calls for the police department should call a health expert or so forth. Most of your police departments in this country are about 10 people on average, you know, the large ones, New York City, and, you know, Cleveland, you name it, lots of they have more resources, but most police departments are 10 people. They don't have a health expert, you know, just to call, you know? Anyhow, so they did training in that sense. And ... we did this for a lot of, we went ... I went around with them to did at various schools about how a teenager should respond when he is stopped. Now, at that time, this was a new thing, but now you hear parents are telling minority parents I gave my son the talk it's called now the talk. Okay. So we, but we started the talk a long time ago. And so we found that that was kind of positive.

Miguel Hernández (00:44:28): It was accepted both by the police department were present most of the time, you know, with a combined police community group, you know, and we did ... these scenarios so to speak and they were good because they were, you know, the people were professional actors and we had a thing called citizen travel where we could get consultants, you know, like, like these people and pay them a hundred dollars a day. You couldn't get more than a hundred dollars a day and they had to travel, you know, like we did, not first class, you know, tourist class, if you wanna call it that. And ... for whatever reason, they accepted that ... those conditions. And so we were able to bring in people like that, you know? So anyway, this was an instance where we talked about police culture. We talked about community culture, both sides were there and voluntarily, okay. Nobody was forced to be there. And I think it was effective, you know, in my opinion.

Bill Froehlich (00:45:56): I appreciate that, that illustration, and about an effective way for larger systemic change and changing the culture of conversations in the community. So how did you measure the success of your efforts at CRS?

Miguel Hernández (00:46:16): You know, I could never really find a way we didn't have a measure of success, you know, once we didn't have an evaluative component within CRS. Okay. Who knew how to do that. And what were the questions? How did you know you achieved success? So did you achieve success because you came out with a written agreement or did you achieve success because they started ... a human rights commission or a police review commission whatever it was, I guess you could measure it by those things, something would happen, but we didn't have a real evaluative evaluation after, you know, afterwards that was, that was a missing component. So and then we were hampered by the confidentiality clause as well, because, you know, the FBI can say they solved X number of cases. They arrested X number of, you know, and if you achieve peace in the community, nothing happened.

Miguel Hernández (00:47:45): You know what I mean? What do you, what are you, and is it, there was no more trouble for the next three months, the next five years, the next 10 years? What, you know, so I think they have to come up with some, way to measure this kind of very complex and by the seat of the pants mediation, if you wanna call it that, okay, we didn't have that. We didn't have that component. We to say, we did this, this, that, yeah. Once a year, they did an annual report. And they said, we responded to, you know, X number of school cases, police cases, what have you. But no, we had internally, I mean, ourselves and, you know, was there a review, did somebody sit down with you for management afterwards and say, maybe you should have done this better, blah, blah, blah. I mean, if you did something really screwed up, they will tell you, you know.

Bill Froehlich (00:49:03): Okay. Well, thanks. Thanks. Yeah, difficult to measure.

Miguel Hernández (00:49:08): Yeah.

Bill Froehlich (00:49:09): So this question may not be as applicable to you given your retirement date in the late nineties. But you were at CRS during two, for two stints decades apart. So from your perspective, how did the changing nature of civil rights movements and protests activities impact your work?

Miguel Hernández (00:49:32): Well, I guess one thing happened after a while after the wild and woolly sixties and seventies, police departments did learn how to deal with demonstrations. For the most part, some of the bigger ones did, you know, they didn't panic. So to speak. I mean, there were instances where they, you know, people, they acted inappropriately, but they already were doing, or they tried to do what we preach, meet with the other side. Okay. Find out what they wanna do, help them in a sense. Okay. Like organize, demonstration self-policing marshals. We ... often use that as a tool, get people from the community to maintain order. Right. Cops tended to stay in the background. Okay. They would send out orders. Like we call no hats and bats, meaning don't go to a demonstration, you know, with your helmet on and your ... you know, as your first thing, keep those people in a, you know, in a staging area unvisible to the, where it's going, but only bring them in if something really, you know, hits the fan.

Miguel Hernández (00:51:00): So a lot of police departments learned how to respond to demonstration though. And these were things that initially came out to CRS. Like we would say, well, look, I mean, it sounds like a stupid thing, but you know, you complain about people pissing on people's lawns. Okay. To be very, you know, along the ... why do we have, why don't you get some porta potties? I mean, you know, so police department saw us do things like that. Then they had basically their initially they, if they had a police community relations group, they would bring, they, those would lead the people that would talk to the community. Okay. Before they didn't really exist all that much more, the police community was more like a PR thing with the media and so forth. But now they, now, the police departments know just certain people out ahead of a demonstration or, you know, it doesn't always work.

Miguel Hernández (00:52:08): Of course, you know, things, things do go get out of hand as we have learned recently. But for the most part, police departments learn that whole thing. And the communities, I think sometimes think of, well, if they say we should, we should hold a demonstration, but that'd be okay to do, but this is what's gonna happen. It's more orchestrated. Okay. It's, there's more planning that goes into it. That, that has changed in the ... civil rights, you know aspect of it. The other thing is because of age deaths the civil rights leadership of the sixties, isn't there anymore. Okay. There are new people coming up.

Miguel Hernández (00:53:05): This isn't, this isn't really a civil rights problem. I'm going to relate to this, but you know, the Amazon strike in New York city, you have a whole brand new leadership okay. Of people, you know, have come up. And the same thing I think is happening in the civil rights area now who you don't know who they are, black lives matter is an example of that as well in the civil rights things. It's a different, different thing. There isn't any one leader. I mean, yes. There is a ... person who initially organized BLM and, you know, is interviewed in the media so forth, but, but black lives matter is much broader. There are more leadership.

Bill Froehlich (00:54:00): And do you have any, did you have any experience working with decentralized leaders, leadership groups? I know black lives matter wasn't around.

Miguel Hernández (00:54:07): Yeah.

Bill Froehlich (00:54:08): Did you, can you say more about how you worked with decentralized leader leadership groups?

Miguel Hernández (00:54:14): No, because a lot of the people that worked with CRS, you know, we had a lot of people that not a lot of people, several people put it that way that were ministers. Okay. That had come into CRS and we, you know, particularly in the Southern region, people outta the civil rights movement okay. That ... switched sides as it were and went to work for the Justice Department. Okay. So, but anyway, so no, the people that were, that we related to, because of that, generally speaking, was they was a, well, did you call the head of the NAACP? You know ... there were agencies, you know, NAACP was one, CORE was another one that we called from time to time and we had contacts with regularly. Okay. In fact, sometimes they would call CRS, tell us, you know, we got this problem, blah, blah, blah.

Miguel Hernández (00:55:24): So, no. But where the unelected leaders showed up, if I wanna call 'em leaders, but unelected people was when we had formal mediations, you know, you would get people from the community, you know, who, I'm not saying it was a bad thing, but it was difficult because they ... were very in, they were usually generally very intransigent about what they wanted. Whereas, you know, when you dealt with the NAACP or CORE you know, even SNCC, they had a sense of where they wanted to go with this ... what the demonstration, what was going on. But no, we never

Bill Froehlich (00:56:14): That's really interesting because that connects back to your comments from the last interview about community mediations, that you never, one of your concerns is who are the stakeholders in a community mediation. You never really knew. So I wanna get to those back to those community leaders and those who demand justice. You mentioned justice a couple times, but some today demand justice and have no real interest or willingness to negotiate. Did you encounter individuals like that in your work before you retired and how did you deal with it?

Miguel Hernández (00:56:54): Well, yes. Initially everybody is locked into their positions. You know, it, it's sort of like a in that sense, a labor deviation, although I don't equate it to really, but yeah, people are locked in at first. And ... you have to keep going, going, going at it so you find some area of common ground or something happens that changes the dynamics of the negotiation. So you have to be aware of things. You have to be, keep your eye on what could change my minds here. What would make people come around to an idea said, okay ... we want the police chief fired. That was always one of the major ones. You know, what we want 'em fired right now. Okay. And ... after a while, you know, people come around say like, you know, this is gonna take a long time. You know? I mean, the chief has civil service protections. He has you know, vested interest in the community. Police chiefs are political people, by the way, you know, they don't get their jobs because they took a, they just took a test. You know, somebody picked them, usually the chief elected official of the community or the council or whatever, and the smaller the community, the more politics there are anyway.

Miguel Hernández (00:58:40): Oh by the way getting people to change their minds can be difficult if not impossible.

Bill Froehlich (00:58:50): What about those who demand justice and say, look, I am not going to engage with you because simply by engaging with you, I am violating my integrity to my commitment to justice.

Miguel Hernández (00:59:02): You know what? I never had anybody say that to me or imply it that way. No, I never had that.

Bill Froehlich (00:59:12): What about political polarization? How did political polarization impact your work? You described earlier one example where there was a political issue and you said, look, I can't mediate that. I'm sorry. I may be referencing another oral history, but what about polarization? Did that impact your work?

Miguel Hernández (00:59:36): You mean, like Republicans versus Democrats?

Bill Froehlich (00:59:41): Yeah. In a local community though.

Miguel Hernández (00:59:48): Not really. No, no, I never, I never had that. We don't to the level that it is now, certainly not. Or even in ... into small issues that were political in a sense in ... terms of party, a party thing, you know, one way or another, or a guy wouldn't talk to somebody else because he was a Republican or because he was a Democrat or a liberal or conservative. I never, personally, I never experienced that. CRS did respond to a political situation I forget the year it was, but, Miami had the, the Democratic and Republican Conventions, the same summer one right after the other. And this was when the Vietnam war was going on. And it was called operation snow plow.

Bill Froehlich (01:00:59): Snow plow? In Miami

Miguel Hernández (01:01:02): Somebody, somebody had a sense of humor, it wasn't me. And, so we went down to Miami and they had a whole team of people. I mean, we had a large team of people. And so, all of us got assigned to work with different groups because, you know, there were basically, the thing was that there was some impact on minority communities in the minority area, black, Hispanic, and so forth who were involved in the demonstrations, you know? And ... I got assigned to go to Flamingo park, which was the, where was the encampment of the various protest groups that they had tons of them. And I had two groups that I had to maintain relationships with, one was the Vietnam veterans who were there. And, oh God, I'm ... blocking on the name I just can't come up with it. Ron Kovic was it, he was the big kahuna insofar as the Vietnam veterans organization. And I also had to ... be the liaison with the gay community groups. They were in different parts of ... the park. And anyway, so, and then I had to go to, I had to be present at a lot of the committee meetings that the Democrats held and the Republicans held in case something happened. I don't know what the heck I could do, but I was there in case something happened. Like I maybe a minority group tries to burst into the doors or something which never happened, but it was all very interesting. Anyway, so that was as political as we got as far as you know, I really don't know. It wasn't very much minority demonstrations, although things got out of hand one time. We were at a Burdines department store in downtown Miami.

Bill Froehlich (01:03:38): This is at the, during the conventions?

Miguel Hernández (01:03:39): Yeah. And the police threw tear gas in there.

Bill Froehlich (01:03:48): Into the department store?

Miguel Hernández (01:03:49): Underground parking lot, you know, so we got tear gassed. I laugh at it now, but it wasn't funny at the time.

Bill Froehlich (01:04:03): It's not gonna disperse for a while.

Miguel Hernández (01:04:05): Yeah. Burdines and Burdines was a Jewish owned, I think he was a, he was Jewish and Cuban Burdine. And so that created a whole fuss in the Jewish and the Cuban community because all that happens. So anyway, we marched with, I marched with the veterans and, you know, I marched with the gay gay groups and, you know, but that was as political as it got.

Bill Froehlich (01:04:35): So how then do changes in administrations affect the work of CRS? I don't know that you were there for any transitions, but how, from your perspective, did transitions affect the work?

Miguel Hernández (01:04:53): Well, yes. I got RIF'd during the Clinton administration and the Clinton administration. I'm a Democrat. I've been, I'm a, what I call a cradle Democrat. Born and raised in the democratic mold. Okay. But they caved into demands of the Republican party to reduce CRS. Okay. Several times and Janet Reno, I love her to death but I guess she had no choice, you know? And so that, that really reduced the agency a lot, but there were other, there were other RIFs at different time, early on when I was there and later on, RIFs were kind of a, and the administrations were also very well, the Democratic or Republican to appoint a director to CRS. I think the last guy with any length of servers was Gil Pompa. But after that it became acting directors, you know, no directors and they really wanted to kill CRS. They wanted to do it. It was felt that it was no longer needed.

Miguel Hernández (01:06:27): So the budget at one time, I think we had, maybe under Ben Holman, we had maybe close to 300 people, maybe more, I don't know, 400. I forget the numbers, but because we had all of the subject matter people and so forth. But after that reduction, after reduction, after reduction until the last one, when, when Trump came in, it was like, I mean, I wasn't there when Trump came in, but you know, it was down to practically 13 people at one time, 15 people maybe you know, but yeah, the administrations have a lot to do with it, whether they were Republican or a Democrat. We did have ... a honeymoon period there with Nixon, believe it or not. Um, Ed Meese was his Attorney General and for some reason, Ed Meese liked CRS.

Miguel Hernández (01:07:38): I don't know if it was personal experience or whatever, or he saw it as a valuable tool. When Nixon was there, I got to be go to the Virgin Islands for, and be there on numerous times all up because of the Vice President Agnew yeah. Did I tell you this story? I hope I'm not repeating myself. Okay. Well, there was a ... big murder case in the Virgin Islands, the Fountain Valley murders, where a group of African Americans, black men dressed up in military fashion and went to the Fountain Valley golf course, which was a rich golf course of people and they shot up the place. They were attempting to rob it and declare independence for the supposedly independence for the Virgin Islands. So I think five people were kill, I don't know how many people were wounded. And everybody was literally in the Virgin Islands up in arms.

Miguel Hernández (01:08:56): The Vice President Agnew had a condo on St. Croix. So he calls somebody at CRS the director, I guess, and said, look, my neighbors are calling me they are upset, da da. You know, I said, the only thing you can do, you know, that you guys can do. So, the Attorney General said, yeah, I know these guys at CRS. Well, let's get them involved. So I got picked along with Wally Warfield to go down and straightened out the this whole mess down there. I mean, it really was a mess. I mean, yeah. You know, of course the FBI was there, the marshals were there, you know, the only thing they didn't have is the U.S. Marine Corps. You know, they had a lot of fire power went down there and our job was really to talk to the minority and the white community. And we, I have to say we did a fantastic job, particularly with the white community chamber of commerce. We worked on the hotel owners association, you know, because people were arming themselves and they were ready for the next, you know, big, big event. So after that anything happened in the Virgin Island, no matter how, how minor I got calls in to go down and talk to people, which I did. And I was very proud frankly, of what I was able to do.

Bill Froehlich (01:10:42): Yeah. So you engaged the minority communities and the chamber of commerce, the hotel owners association. And when you went back, could you see the lasting impact of that?

Miguel Hernández (01:10:53): Yeah. You could, you could see that, you know, particularly, we had one instance where, a U.S. ... land based corporations bought a hotel it was called Hotel On The Cay. It's still, and Hotel On The Cay is a little, is a, there's a little island slightly bigger than your living room. No I'm exaggerating, but it's really tiny and there's a hotel on it. Anyway, they bought this hotel and they brought in management from, I don't know, Indiana where they're from. And the first thing they did was to close the hotel off to the community. Now the beach people used to go there, they go swimming and everything, and a beautiful beach there and everything, and the beaches were in essence public property. So we had to talk to them, you know, and say, look, yeah, you can own the whole hotel. Obviously nobody are gonna take it away from you, you know, but this beach is a public beach. You, you know, it's been there for hundreds of years, you know, anyway. So we, we finally got them to, we finally got them to drop that policy and peace and harmony will restored. Thanks to me.

Bill Froehlich (01:12:34): You mentioned CRS staffing staffing at times. Yes. And three, 400 and down to 13. Yeah. CRS is in a, so my understanding they're trying to hire right now. But what is sufficient need for staffing? What's a sufficient staffing level at CRS. And when CRS, when you were with CRS and there wasn't sufficient staffing, did you ever partner with other organizations either state feds or local?

Miguel Hernández (01:13:06): Okay. Let me answer the ... latter question first, back then every region had a federal regional council, which was a group of the major and even minor federal agencies, but mostly those agencies that had funds to distribute or had resources like HUD, for example. Okay. And CRS at the regional level actually was our, you know, our Wally Warfield was the person designated to sit at these meetings and they would talk about, you know, kind of an update to update all the other agencies, you know, cause a lot of this stuff overlaps that federal agency could do. And so they would hold meetings monthly, I think it was or, and so we got to know the, we got to know leadership, the regional directors through Wally, of course, of all of these other agencies. And so when something came up that we felt that they should know about the situation, we could let them know we could give them a heads up kind of thing.

Miguel Hernández (01:14:32): Or we could say, look ... maybe this needs funding or this needs, this, that some resource that you have. So yeah. So there was a lot of cooperation and then I also made it a point, even beside that, to talk to other federal agencies, you know, on a one to one basis, it was informal. Obviously CRS can't make anybody do anything really. So it was informal, you know, it usually happened after hours. Okay. At the hotel, you know, there's a bar downstairs or whatever. And at that time, you know, we weren't so, you can't, you know, we didn't drink during the day. Okay. But you know, at night when you were, you know, anyway, it was, it was loosey goosey a bit let me put it that way. And so it was a different atmosphere. And so we would talk to people and most of the time, it was a very positive kind of thing.

Miguel Hernández (01:15:44): You know, you know, people are, what do you call it? They're territorial, you know, whatever their agency is, you know, they ...operate kind of in silos. So we try to break that down a little bit. And I think the ... that was the goal of the federal regional council to break the silos. I don't, I don't know that's there anymore, but getting back to your other question, how much staffing does CRS need? I think they should revisit having, the subject matter experts back on ... some level. I think that the people that they're hiring now, I don't know this absolutely, but it seems to me, a lot of them come out of mediation, which is good. I'm not knocking it, but they need people with a broader, they need more, they general practitioners and people with particular skills in other fields to help them along, or they need a better vetting of consultants that they can bring on from time to time.

Miguel Hernández (01:16:58): Okay. I don't know if they, you know, I don't know what their budgeting is gonna ultimately be. How many of their planning on, you know, you gotta ask the director that question, but I think if they had more people with different skill sets to compliment the mediation, you need a lot of help when you're in formal mediation, you know, we didn't, I didn't get it. You know, I, you know, on my own, I called people that I knew, or I had heard about and talked to them on the phone to get, what do you think about this? What do you think about that? How you do, you know, that kind of stuff, but it was, you need, when you are, the community mediation is very difficult, even like, you know, the Texaco mediation.

Bill Froehlich (01:17:55): Yeah. The court 25 sessions.

Miguel Hernández (01:17:59): Oh my God. Yeah. 25 sessions. I was exhausted by the end of this thing, you know, but you know, after that, I only veer off for a moment. There I've been veering awful lot. But after that, the case was decided in court and everything. They created Texaco, the court created another mediator, but it wasn't a one mediator, it was a committee of people, including heading it up was Deval Patrick. They had ... judges, they had, I mean, it was a committee of about at least 10 people, maybe more. Okay. But they were all top drawer people, people that you, you know, had different kinds of expertise and everything else. And I don't know why, but at the end of it, so they came up with the settlement 176 million. Ultimately it came out to the law firm, got 28 million. It, at that time, it was the highest settlement money settlement in the history of the United States. But it wasn't one person wasn't one media. Like I was, I was there alone and they had, they were lawyers, both sides were lawyered up, you know, a tough situation. But anyway, where was I going with this?

Bill Froehlich (01:19:46): We're talking about resources.

Miguel Hernández (01:19:47): Resources, exactly resources. So you, you know, they need to, I think they need to give a lot of backup to their mediators who are doing mediation work. Okay. Because it's not a, so I don't think you should have two mediators. Okay. You could have, you could have in certain situations, but you gotta have people that can listen in and saying, maybe we should try this, or maybe you or Miguel, you're not doing this correctly. Here's what I think you should, here's maybe what you should try to do. Okay. Because community mediation is very, very difficult because you have so many parties and changing leadership and all that stuff. And sometimes like the Texaco case, it could be something very, very complicated, you know, particularly for one person whose total mediation training was maybe like two weeks, three weeks, whatever it was, you know, it wasn't like, you know, I, like I took a ... course in it, you know, where you know, had other students and a professor and, you know, all that whole, you know, the whole thing was like, we went to a training thing. Okay. Sometimes we were trained internally for two, three days. Sometimes we went for a more intensive training with an outside consulting group. But you know, mediation training was, is another, I guess they're doing it now. I really don't know, but they're hiring people from what I understand that are trained mediators. Okay. Well, they prefer to get that type of people.

Bill Froehlich (01:21:48): So two quick things, first of all, I wanna make sure I understand for the reader and the viewer, we define community mediation. So could you define what you mean by community mediation? Because I think in the mediation community, when we're talking about community mediation, we typically talk about a community mediation center, which might mediate neighborhood cases, court connected cases. You're talking about something different. Could you define community mediation?

Miguel Hernández (01:22:16): Community mediation is mediation that takes place when there's some sort of disruption in a community, usually based on race, national origin, color, so forth. And now we have a whole, you know, and usually it's because there's been some untoward incident or incidents, you know, .. and there's widespread media exposure to the incident and everything that happened. And you have a lot of people and it, and a lot of people are in this event. And a lot of people show up and you can lay ground rules out and say, only these people who, the, who the hell are you to tell who can come be at the meeting. Okay. People pick ... and then there are people who impose themselves at the meetings. Okay. And you tell people, you can only talk for three minutes or set whatever rule you have. That's gonna go by the wayside pretty quickly. Okay. People take over the meeting and you are there by yourself. Okay. And you say, well, actually I thought we would agreed to ... five minutes per speaker and say yeah. You know ... or you only talk for five minutes or whatever, it is.

Miguel Hernández (01:23:57): So it's a different, it's a different, it's wild and woolly is what I'm gonna say to you.

Bill Froehlich (01:24:02): I appreciate that.

Miguel Hernández (01:24:03): Not structured

Bill Froehlich (01:24:04): We're on the same page. I just wanna make it clear for those reading it.

Miguel Hernández (01:24:08): Okay.

Bill Froehlich (01:24:09): Okay. We, so you mentioned this briefly that a lot of federal agencies at DOJ and elsewhere are siloed. Did you ever face pressure from any, anyone, even in DOJ to stay in your lane?

Miguel Hernández (01:24:27): Yes. I think I told you last time, Rudy Giuliani.

Bill Froehlich (01:24:32): Yep you told me that story.

Miguel Hernández (01:24:33): He was the U.S. Attorney at the time. And, you know, I got a very strong message from his top assistant to stay out of the Williamsburg case. And, but, you know, I talked to people and they talked to people and basically Mayor Became at that time, told, said that I would be, I would be taken off the case over his dead body. That was, that's a direct quote. He's dead now, but that's what he said.

Bill Froehlich (01:25:10): Yeah. So

Miguel Hernández (01:25:12): That's the only time I ever recall, you know, anybody, you know, maybe they implied it, but we didn't pay much attention to it anyway.

Bill Froehlich (01:25:22): Okay. Fair enough. So who decides, what types of cases you take and which particular cases you take on is that you, the national regional director, someone in headquarters, were there any particular criteria you used?

Miguel Hernández (01:25:41): Well, that's one of those depend answers.

Bill Froehlich (01:25:46): Well, a law professor would never answer that way.

Miguel Hernández (01:25:49): You, when I was with the crisis response unit headed up by Marty Walsh, he got a lot of information and then he would call me Ed Cabell was the other guy involved with my office or he would call whoever it was and say, look, we just got this report, you know, that this and this happened and this and this place in your region. And I want you to go there and find out what happened in doing an assessment, blah, blah, blah. So he he's told you, you know where to go from time to time. Sometimes you heard it by your, you heard it, you got it. And you called him. And he said, hey, Marty. So and so, and the regional director was my media supervisor, but I really reported to Marty Walsh in Washington.

Bill Froehlich (01:26:49): And this is in your role, not as a conciliator, but as part of a crisis response unit?

Miguel Hernández (01:26:54): Yeah. Crisis response.

Bill Froehlich (01:26:55): It's a little bit different typically conciliators would do something like this with their regional director?

Miguel Hernández (01:27:00): Yeah. So it was a different, I don't know how the regional director felt about it, but, you know, anyway, so that was the case there on the regional level, basically, I kind of decided where to go. I mean, sometimes yeah. But basically I read, I, you know, we had to monitor what was going on through the media. We had subscriptions to newspapers, you know, like everybody was assigned a particular area within their region. So, you know, we would get the newspapers and read 'em or we would read a ticket tape, you know, no social media back then. And then we'd bring it up to the boss and say, look, this is happening and, you know, anyway, so, and of course, so ... it depended on what was going on, who would tell you where to go, where, okay. But it was a lot of self, most of the cases, frankly, regardless of who were initiated by CRS, you know, not, not that somebody called us and said, listen, we did get people who call up and say, I want you to go such and such a place.

Bill Froehlich (01:28:20): Right.

Miguel Hernández (01:28:20): When the vice president called

Bill Froehlich (01:28:22): Told the AG

Miguel Hernández (01:28:24): Angew said listen, my condo's gonna blow up, come and save it.

Bill Froehlich (01:28:30): So were there any local officials that reached out to you directly and said, hey, Miguel, we need help with this.

Miguel Hernández (01:28:36): Yeah, yeah. We would get that. But it was, it wasn't rare. We tried to get more of that by when things wouldn't happen, we would go out and quote-on-quote market CRS, you know, would have a bunch of brochures and we'd go to community X and we'd sit down with the mayor and the police chief and tell 'em all, this is what CRS and we're neutral. And we give all, you know, and here's my card. And, you know, even if nothing ... call me from and expect some calls from me from time to time, you know? So, we did some of that. I don't know how successful it was, but yeah, we got, we did get calls from chiefs of police from time to time. I did get a call once from the police chief of Buffalo, Gil Kerlikowske. He was, he's a, I think he became head of DEA at one time. Anyway, that was one guy that, that I recall chief of police of a big city that did call us.

Bill Froehlich (01:29:45): So shifting a little bit. This is a question I neglected previously. Were you ever asked to do something that you were unable to do either by a party to a mediation or a community mediation or an outside party? Like a member of the media and how did you deal with that? I'm sure the media asked you for confidential information. You said I can't do that.

Miguel Hernández (01:30:08): Yes, I can't. Yeah

Bill Froehlich (01:30:09): Are there, are there other scenarios where you asked, you were asked to do something you couldn't do?

Miguel Hernández (01:30:16): Hmm.

Bill Froehlich (01:30:17): One other you mentioned is when you were, abroad, you couldn't take mail, you couldn't take requests from the parties about citizenship or residency in the United States. You know, that's another issue that comes to mind, but you were given specific instructions on that assignment. So that's a little unique but are there other things that come to mind?

Miguel Hernández (01:30:38): Hmm

Bill Froehlich (01:30:46): If not, that's okay.

Miguel Hernández (01:30:46): No, I can't. I can't think of any. Okay. That comes to mind.

Bill Froehlich (01:30:51): Did you ever have to combat now? It happens all the time, but you probably experienced it. Did you ever have to combat fake news or misinformation in communities or in the media?

Miguel Hernández (01:31:03): Yes. Yes. This happened quite frequently, particularly when there were demonstrations or some, you know, things were happening. So, you know, things would get out in the media or ... otherwise, and I relied very heavily on a guy named Shamsky. I think his name was, I it'll come to me. Art his name was, I forget his last name at the moment, but anyway, Art was a media guy. He was in, he was in Washington and his shtick, I think I told you this was was he called rumor control? I called it rumor verification. I thought that was a better, more accurate. And what we would do is come into a community and try to identify a group of citizens, you know, and put it at a call for them to come in and be trained as rumor verifiers.

Miguel Hernández (01:32:07): And basically, they were to ... we would get rumors that 300 black armed black men are coming to town from X, you know? And so we would send, and they ... were seen on highway 30, one outside gathering there. And so we would send out a person that was nearby and say, look, we got this rumor here. Or, you know, and this is what, what this says is could you go out there and see what's going on? You know, could we, would, you know, we couldn't run all over town, checking everything out. I mean, sometimes we did, but we preferred to have other people go out. At least I did. And other people that, and they would go out and say, there's nobody out here, or yes, it's absolutely true run for your life. You know, whatever it was. But, but anyway, that was the extent of that we had, that was the toolbox that we had rumor verification. I thought it was pretty effective. You know,

Bill Froehlich (01:33:20): What did that, what, how did you train them? You trained these folks? Were they volunteers, were there other officials?

Miguel Hernández (01:33:26): They were volunteers. They were volunteers. Basically the training was this, we would line line people up in rows. Let's say we had 25 people. So it'd be five rows of people, you know, five each. And we would whisper a message to them, whatever it was like the color blue is a primary color. Okay. And by the time I got to the last person, the primary color was black or whatever it was. In other words, the story changed as it went from person to person. So that was one of the techniques that were that we used to basically tell people how then the other thing was look, we showed them a crime scene, you know, a video tape or whatever of it. And the person would say, okay, tell us what you saw. So people would tell us what they saw, but a lot of people had saw it differently.

Miguel Hernández (01:34:36): You know, the guy had a pistol, the guy had a revolver. The guy was unarmed, but so it all depended where they were sitting in the room or where the witness was. You could have been up on the second story, you saw it from this angle, that angle. So we try to teach people how, you know, how people view things and people also that people view things from their own background and experience and so forth. And so we try to show them, this is what happened. So try to avoid that, you know, when you report that was it.

Bill Froehlich (01:35:15): Yeah. Thanks. Thanks for that. I love that, we, the first, exercise you described was telephone we would call it.

Miguel Hernández (01:35:24): That's right. That's right.

Bill Froehlich (01:35:25): But effective. And I've never gotten something so close where only one word has changed. So that's good for your trainings. I have a number of questions now that I don't think apply to you because of the time periods.

Miguel Hernández (01:35:38): Okay.

Bill Froehlich (01:35:38): So I'm gonna read each one of 'em and then I'm gonna pause.

Miguel Hernández (01:35:44): Okay

Bill Froehlich (01:35:44): Then if you have something you wanna add go ahead. So in the last few years, what changes have there been in policing that have impacted your work at CRS? In the last few years, what changes have there been in the justice system that have impacted your work at CRS? And then in the last few years, what changes have there been in the education system that have impacted your work at CRS? Anything you wanna respond to those?

Miguel Hernández (01:36:15): Probably, well, I'm not working so but you know, there have been changes, as we mentioned before. Greater sophistication on the part of police and school systems and so forth.

Bill Froehlich (01:36:26): Absolutely. And what role did social media media play in your work with advocates and communities? From a conciliator perspective? Was it useful? How did you prevent social media from disrupting the process? Okay, don't worry about that. And then another question for you and this one, you might have a perspective on because it changed the mission, the scope of mission of CRS. So I'd like to get your perspective, how did the passage of the Shepard Byrd Act alter the scope of your work? Or how would it have altered the scope of your work?

Miguel Hernández (01:37:07): Mm.

Bill Froehlich (01:37:08): And if you don't have a response that's fine.

Miguel Hernández (01:37:10): I don't, I don't it's no.

Bill Froehlich (01:37:13): Okay. Do you have any advice for navigating the bureaucracy of CRS?

Miguel Hernández (01:37:20): Lots.

Bill Froehlich (01:37:24): Okay.

Miguel Hernández (01:37:30): Well, you know, I think I mentioned to you too earlier, we, we always had these, and us and them relationship with the national office, you know, the guys international, what the hell they're doing. They're, you know, they, they're totally isolated, you know ... in the what do you call it? That circle that goes around Washington DC.

Bill Froehlich (01:37:55): Beltway.

Miguel Hernández (01:37:55): Yeah.

Miguel Hernández (01:37:56): The beltway exactly

Bill Froehlich (01:37:58): The swamp I guess

Miguel Hernández (01:37:59): Yeah. So no, this was pretty common. But I think it exists in ... all organizations that are national and scope or even international scope either governmental or private. So you just gotta, you just gotta understand that kind of perspective again, you know, it depends on where you're ... standing at the time. You know, the only person that I know successfully navigated that is Tim Johnson, because Tim works at the national office and in the New York office. So he had ...

Bill Froehlich (01:38:45): You know I'm talking to him this afternoon.

Miguel Hernández (01:38:47): Okay.

Bill Froehlich (01:38:50): And that is actually the first question I have for him.

Miguel Hernández (01:38:52): Tell him I said hello.

Bill Froehlich (01:38:53): I will, Miguel, of course, I believe he asked me to say hello to you as well. We met a couple weeks ago. So that's fine. It depends. Depends on your perspective. And is there anything concrete that you would say to someone starting at CRS now?

Miguel Hernández (01:39:16): With, with regard to navigating

Bill Froehlich (01:39:19): Bureaucracy

Miguel Hernández (01:39:22): Well, I would say understand that they have a point of view that is colored by their national perspective and understand that you're basically your perspective is the same as a soldier in a foxhole. You know, you come out of there, you're in the battle and you see it from your point of view. It's not that they're wrong and you are right. That's what I would say to them. It's just that it it's a different point of view. So put your mediator hat. This is what you do as a mediator. You know, you look at people's perspectives and try to negotiate between that's the only thing I would say to them.

Bill Froehlich (01:40:11): That's, that's valuable. You've mentioned several folks, but I wanna know specifically, who did you learn from, in order to do the work well at CRS?

Miguel Hernández (01:40:24): I learned from a lot of people and I would say one of my, one of the principal, there was several good, good one was Bob Lamb, Captain Bob lamb. We call him Captain Bobby. But you know, it wasn't negatively, you know, was a thing

Bill Froehlich (01:40:41): Before you go on about Captain Lamb, he was in Atlantic City and he also went to the Seattle regional director?

Miguel Hernández (01:40:46): That's right. He became ...

Bill Froehlich (01:40:49): Just wanna make sure we're talking about the same, same individual.

Miguel Hernández (01:40:51): That's the same guy. Bob to begin with was a World War II veteran. And he was ... the segregated army at that time. And he rose through the ranks of Atlantic City at the time Atlantic City might as well been in the deep south. Okay. Not, you know, there's a part of New Jersey or that was, or still is, I don't know, below the Mason Dixon line. I don't mean that figuratively. I meant that actually, but you'd have to check that out. But anyway, this is what I was told.

Miguel Hernández (01:41:35): Atlantic City is below Mason Dixon line. So he came up and rose through the ranks, which was not easy given Atlantic City. This was before the gambling thing and all that stuff. But anyway, so he had to have political sense and ... he was a very bright man and he ... was big guy. So he had what I call command presence. And I guess it has to do with the fact that I was in the military. So I respected that somehow it was. And ... it wasn't so much as what he said, but what he did. So he sort led by example. So that was one person that was, that I had a lot of respect for. He wasn't my boss, he wasn't my friend. So to speak. I mean, you know, CRS was a very small agency.

Miguel Hernández (01:42:45): Always. You knew everybody. Okay. There was a esprit de corps. Okay. Was like in the Marines almost. People believed in it, they believed there was a mission and Bob had a thing he called or not the holy grail, but sacred trust. Used that word or something like that. And so you went to work with CRS, you believed in it, you believed, I'm not saying everybody, but most people okay. You knew them ... so anyway, that all I can say. So I had Bob Lamb stay on target here. Bob Lamb was a person I respected. Another person I respected was a guy named Jim

Bill Froehlich (01:43:40): Sorry. Before you, before move off Bob is there specific story that you want tell about him?

Miguel Hernández (01:43:48): Well, Bob Lamb was in charge the team leader when we went to Miami, you know

Bill Froehlich (01:43:58): Operation snow plow

Miguel Hernández (01:43:59): Operations snow plow and ... he held a meeting every morning, got the team assembled, you know, around the table. And he would say, Miguel, I want you to go here and I want you to do this and talk to so, and so he knew a lot of people, so he would say, maybe you should maybe, and he never said talk to so, and so he would say, I would like you to, he put it in that, in a suggestion mode as opposing to a directive.

Miguel Hernández (01:44:42): And that was very effective. I thought, you know, I thought about it, you know, I guess he, I guess he really wanted you to do that, but he never came across of, you gotta do this or else or something like that. You know, he wasn't, he wasn't a boss. Okay. So I think he ... believed in his team building concepts, I guess. We had ... at that time we had annual training sessions of the entire CRS. Everybody came from every region, we went to some hotel. And you know we had lectures about this, we had speakers about that and then there were the after hour sessions, you know, and you got to know people and you became part of this team. Okay. So they never used the phrase team building. Okay. Maybe it didn't exist then, but in retrospect that's what happened. So Bob was one of those people that did that team building thing very, very effectively. And, you know, most people liked him, you know, they respected him and that's, I guess the most you can, you can wish for, to be respected.

Miguel Hernández (01:46:10): And so we had another guy named John Terronez of Chicago office. I worked with John a lot. I got to go different places other regions and so forth. And he was out of Chicago and anyway, we went, we were also in Miami together and ... John was like our expert on the Indian issues. But anyway Terronez was another guy like that [inaudible] a few others. Yeah. But mostly there were people that were, you know, in my, at the time, anyway, we were peers, you know what I'm saying? But on a supervisor level, I always respected and liked Wally Warfield. Okay. He was my immediate boss at, he was deputy regional director when I was there in the early days. So he Wally you know, he could drive me crazy at times, but I really truly respected him. So, but he was not my peer, he was my boss, but you know I

Bill Froehlich (01:47:37): What, were did the respect come from?

Miguel Hernández (01:47:43): I admired how calm he always was. And I would say, I wish I could be that detached and calm as he is, you know, but he gave that aura of detachment. You knew he wasn't detached. Okay. But he would, he gave you that feeling that, this is the way I see things. And you were getting ... a feeling you could, you could borrow that calmness, you know, and say, gee, I just mean, I wish I was like, that would add so much to my character, but I'm a little more on the passionate side, not a little a lot more.

Bill Froehlich (01:48:36): Appreciate that. So, Miguel, I'm just gonna hit the pause button real quick.

Miguel Hernández (01:48:42): Okay.

Bill Froehlich (01:48:43): So, Miguel, we've got a couple more questions to go through and thank you so much for this session today. We'll see you probably in about a week.

Miguel Hernández (01:48:56): Bye