Timothy Johnson -- Part 1 of 3

Timothy Johnson was with CRS from ‘84 to 2010 and the positions he held were Reconciliation Specialist, Chief of Field Coordination, and then Senior Conciliation Specialist.

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

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dRkKPZhIAvU

0:05        Bill Froehlich:       Okay great so it is July 21st, 2021, and my name is Bill Froehlich: and I’m here with former senior conciliator Timothy Johnson for a first interview. Mr. Johnson is our first interviewee for the civil rights mediation oral history project. Mr. Johnson, if you could simply tell us your name so we have it for the record, your time at CRS, and the positions you held.

0:36        Tim Johnson:       Okay. My name is Timothy Johnson. I was with CRS from ‘84 to 2010 and the positions I held were reconciliation specialist, chief of field coordination, and then back in the field a senior conciliation specialist.

1:01        Bill Froehlich:      Thank you. Wonderful. I sent you a few interview questions in advance. Generally, we’re going to go through many of those questions today. There are some sub questions I didn’t send you because I did not want to overwhelm you. But why don’t we go ahead and get started. So, can you tell us a little bit about your career trajectory prior to coming to CRS?

1:26        Tim Johnson:       Sure. From ‘66 to ‘69 I was in the United States army. I served in Thailand for a year. I was a non-combat soldier. Got out in March of 1969. From ‘69 to ‘71 I went to college. I also had jobs at Northwood VA hospital as an orderly and a short while as a mail carrier for the post office which was helpful because at the time my wife was pregnant and required a cesarean and they paid for it so that was very very helpful. From ‘71 to ‘73, while still going to school, I was an academic teacher at the Suffolk County Long Island jail. Then later at the Suffolk County Long Island Honor Farm.

I graduated with a BA in social science in ‘73 and we moved down to Richmond, Virginia where I became an academic teacher for the Virginia state department of corrections and also went to graduate school. I was a schoolteacher and then switched over to being a counselor. Then in ‘75 I graduated with a master's in counseling and in ‘78 I left the department of corrections and became an adult criminal justice specialist for the state of Virginia.

At that time, each state had a state planning agency for criminal justice purposes, and they received money from an organization called LEAA (Law Enforcement Assistance Administration) and I did that. Then in ‘84 I joined the LEAA in Washington DC where I was first a program analyst and then switched over to being a juvenile justice specialist. That happened ‘78 to ‘84.

Then in ‘84 I joined the CRS. In federal government politics plays a part and when the political parties change, and I was with the office of juvenile justice and delinquency prevention the new management came in and named the five people that they wanted to get rid of, four of whom I could understand. The remaining one was me and I thought well, I’m not really nearly as cool as those other four people. Since firing federal employees is so difficult, they just said “well, we are going to change your duties” and they put me on a shelf which meant I literally had nothing to do. I sat there... Which people have done. They come in and do crosswords and write books or whatever. I chose not to do that. I chose to look for another job and I found CRS at that time.

There was an opening in the New York regional office which I took. I stayed there for a while. Then they offered me a job in Washington DC as being Chief of Field Coordination and my feeble ego blew up and I thought “oh my god I’ll be a chief this is so cool.” It was not what I had hoped it would be.

You mentioned earlier Wally Warfield. Wally Warfield was at one time the Chief of Field Coordination and he was a very trusted and welcomed ally of mine. When I came into the New York Regional Office I took his position. He had left to go to Washington DC and left the vacancy and he went down to Washington as Chief of Field Coordination and later Deputy Director and for a short period Director.

But the thing about the job was that it was first something I very strongly believed in: making peace and advancing civil rights. What we did at that time was we would have to write reports on everything that we did, every case. So, you would write what they called an alert which was just an announcement that we think is a problem and we’re going to look into it. Then we would write an assessment. I spoke to all sides involved and this is what they said, and they agreed to go forward to conciliation or mediation and then you would write and report on how you were doing and progressing in the conciliation and then finally a final report on what the results were.

Now every conciliation specialist typed their own reports. This was well before word processing and whatnot and headquarters had hard copies of every report which was massive and every once in a while, you would receive back a note from Wally Warfield: “I’ve read your report, looks good, you’re doing a good job, have you considered XYZ?” I just thought what a fabulous resource this guy is. This is incredible that he would take time to help a little schmuck like me out and he read every report that came in every week. Which, figured there was 10 regions, and some regions a little more than others, but that was you know, a hundred reports that he would read, and he not only read them, but he commented on them. He encouraged you. He helped you. He trained you. He said, that he was one of his terms: “have you thought about...” and you know, I would say to myself as I was reading that “no it never occurred to me at all. What a great idea.” Then I would do that, and I would report back you know: “I did so and so, and the disputants responded positively blah blah bah” and he would write back great job.

So, during that time when I was with the New York office it was a really fascinating time. When I first got there, there was another conciliator named Johnson. So, they hooked me up with Johnson. So, we became Johnson and Johnson, and we would go around to cases and the other Johnson was African American and we would introduce ourselves and he would say “I’m John Johnson and this is Tim Johnson: , no relation.” So, I would learn the basics you know, this is how you do an assessment, these are some ideas about where to go. I also had the advantage of working with Victor Rizzo who at the time was the 14. Each region had a regional director and a 14. Ideally, the 14 was supposed to manage and you know do things like that. Mostly they didn’t but I had the advantage of watching you know what John did and what Victor did and then they said okay poof you’re on your own. Which I welcomed. I thought this is great. I’ve got Wally Warfield in Washington reading my stuff and he’s giving me feedback. I’m on the right track so I was very happy. Not happy with the bureaucracy. Not happy with the politics. But, really happy to be able to go out into the community and do exactly what Lyndon Johnson spoke about during the creation of the legislation for CRS. What he said was let us sit and reason together. And I thought well yeah otherwise you’re not going to make any progress at all. So, I sat in reasons with a whole bunch of people and you know I worked 60 hours a week and never complained about it because I didn’t have a job, I had a vocation.

I would like to point out, when you’re in the federal government, politics is going to have effects and during some administrations we were shunned or not thought of as a resource. Kind of pushed aside. Reagan did it, Bush one did it, Bush two did it and we went out of priority. During those times throughout the agency, staff felt very very disheartened and discouraged. Like, what’s the point? Why am I doing anything? Nobody cares.

At that time, we had a regional director in Seattle Washington whose name was Bob Lamb. I don’t know if you’ve ever heard of Bob Lamp. Bob Lamb was six-foot four. Probably weighed three fifty-three sixty. When I knew him, he was already in his 60s. If Bob walked into a room and didn’t say a word, everyone would just stop talking. Yeah, I’m sure you've met people like this. Just magnanimous. He had an electric about him. He was an African American who rose to the rank of captain in the Atlantic City Police Department during the 1950s. Very, very difficult to do as an African American. He was not a college graduate, but he was a font of knowledge and in conversation he was...

I should, you know, for openness admit, he was my mentor. Don't know why. I’m fabulously fortunate that he took his time, and we would have discussed, and he would call me up and say: “what's going on?” I got this case, and I got that case, and we would go back and forth on cases and sometimes we would yell at each other and each time I’d say well Bob give me a break, you know, what are you talking about, you don’t know nothing, and I’d hang up. And then a couple of days later I’d pick up the phone and say Bob this is Tim you were right, I was wrong, I'm sorry. But he was just a wonderful person to know. Very big by the way on the classics, Greek classics, and he would use that in conversations.

But at one point he said to me: “we have a sacred trust” and I said really what's that? And he tried to explain to me what he meant by a sacred trust. I took that to heart and the sacred trust that we were talking about was our focus and commitment to racial justice in America. He knew that it wouldn't be over in his lifetime. He knew that it's gonna take generations to move forward to the point where we don't talk about race.

So, right around that time people were very very disheartened. We had a director named Grace Hughes who's just, I’m sure she's a nice person, but she didn't have any commitment to the field. She didn't have any commitment to the casework that was being done and we were all very disheartened. So, at that time, I wrote a paper, and the paper was called Sacred Trust. Here's a copy of Sacred Trust which I’ve kept, and I printed this out on my little feeble printer at home and I then got addresses, private addresses, home addresses, for every conciliation specialist in the agency and I sent this to them. And I said I’m not suggesting you adopt this. I'm not suggesting that you believe this. I'm not suggesting that this be something that you want. I'm just telling you this is where I’m coming from. Basically, what I said to them was... (rather than read the whole thing to you I’ll just give you a little highlight), it's just one page but I said: “CRS is about being on the front lines of racial tension and violence in America and making a difference. Look among CRS. CRS responds without hesitation, will go wherever the need is, whenever the need arrives, for as long as it takes, and often we were the first ones on the scene.” And I got very positive feedback from the field and very negative feedback from management. Who, their first question was: “where was this written?” in the hopes of saying that I used government stuff. How did you send it? I sent it all private mail. I paid for every stamp because I was fearful that they would say that.

But I share that to just to give you a flavor of when you work for the federal government there are political winds that have to be navigated, that have to be dealt with, and sometimes you know, it's like in basic mediation training you know you're going to compromise, are you going to compete, are you going to avoid, you know those things. And what I chose to do, and what several other and conciliation specialists chose to do: let's try and do our job of getting people to sit and reason together.

And so that basically is a theme throughout federal employment. Under Trump for example, things were, from what I hear from existing staff, not at all supportive. You can't do the job if you can't sit and reason together, you can't sit and reason together if you can't go out and talk with people. You can't go out and talk with people if you have no budget. So, the challenges just kept mounting and mounting and mounting. Now with the pandemic, I'm not aware of how much money or how often conciliation specialists could use Zoom, or a like thing, to say “hi, I’m so-and-so from CRS, and we understand there may be an issue, do you want to talk about it?” I can't imagine the challenges that conciliation specialists face. You know, you’re a face on my computer, I don't know who you are, I don't trust you, thank you very much, but no. But ideally what we should have is a staff of people where they go to the location and sit down and do a real assessment with real people in real time so that B.) we can understand what the issues are and whether or not they meet CRS requirements and B.) let people know that if you want to solve something we can help you. If you don't want our help, then you're going to have to look for other avenues to resolve your conflict.

That was Mike Johnson, a big important guy. It's my brother. He's in Puerto Rico and he's bedridden. We call each other every day. The big excitement yesterday was his second day of physical therapy. Now using three-pound weights, which he hastens to point out at home I only use two pounds.

21:34     Bill Froehlich:      That’s 50% more if you ask me. This is incredible. I mean, there's so much depth here Tim that I’d love to dig into a little bit. I really appreciate you highlighting the value of mentorship, the distinction, and some occasional tension between administration and those in the field, the political winds, how you got into this. But if you don't mind, I'd love to just rewind a little bit about you and ask you a little bit more about... It seems like your history before joining CRS after the military, you're really focused on providing support to incarcerated individuals and I wonder if you can say more about what drove you to that and how that connected to your work at CRS if it did?

22:26     Tim Johnson:       Yes, very much so. As a yute in New York. I was... back in the early 60s you had a choice one could be a hood or a collegiate. Collegians, they had crew cuts and flat tops and madras shirts and penny loafers and khakis. Hoods on the other hand, and I know this will take some imagination on your part, but the hoods had way big hair which they put tons of grease on, and they wore usually dungarees, tight dungarees, and boots and they smoked massive amounts of cigarettes and drank way too much. The hoods were not academically inclined. So, during high school I ran with the hoods and not the collegiates and then when I was 18, I mean absolutely no education, but I did have literacy. I must say. That was based on the fact that when we were pre-teens we didn't have a television so my mother would say there's nothing better than crawling up with a good book and an apple. I don't like apples, but I did read. So, I did have literacy.

So, upon graduating in high school I had nowhere to go so I went to the army and in the army there's a certain maturation process that goes on. When I got back most of the kids that I knew weren't there anymore. Many of them had fallen prey to drugs and they were either incarcerated or not doing really well at all. So as a 21-year-old I had the maturation enough to say okay that's not where I need to be. Maybe I should go to college and then I thought to myself well you know, I didn't do very well in high school. In fact, the high school people told me we're passing you just to get rid of you. We don't want you in our high school and I said “well, I'm getting a high school diploma” and then I suggested that they perform a sexual act amongst themselves and left and started to go to college. Met a fabulous woman. And let's see, I got out in March, started college that summer, got married that October, had a kid the following June. So now I’m going to college, I'm working, and I’ve got a daughter and this beautiful woman, who I hasten to point out still lives with me. Yeah, I'm shocked as well. So we're together 52 years and we had two fabulous children.

But in going to college that changes your status. Changes how people perceive you. So, when I did interact with people that I knew in high school they said “well, you know you've kind of changed. What do you mean? You're different. What do you mean? Well, I don't know. So, I’m going to college. Well that's fine you be that, we will be us. And it occurred to me then, I said well, you know there needs to be a link where people can talk to each other and come up with reasonable relationships, so that we don't have this class system of you’re this you’re that. That's you know pretty much high school stuff, which happens today by the way in high school you know we have groups. And so once I got to, I guess, the junior year of college, I thought well maybe I should work with inmates you know, maybe I should show them that they could do what I did. You know they don't have to be you know this narrow thing. They could widen that up a bit and so I started working at a local jail as a teacher and then at a local on a phone while continuing my work at college. So that worked out pretty good. I thought okay when I graduate I got to get a full-time job and the jail didn't have any full-time jobs. You know their answer to treatment programs was have volunteers come in teach people how to read or something so I looked around and I found work with the Virginia State Department of Corrections. That's great I'll go down there and while I'm there I'll see if I can't get into Virginia Commonwealth University and, you know, get a degree because the idea being the more degrees you have the more jobs you can get blah blah blah. I did that for a while.

One of the big things I did while I was at the prison was I created what's called the Community Involvement Group. The Community Involvement Group took inmates out of the prison into the community where they performed certain projects, cleanups, that kind of thing and they said: “oh this is great.” It also involved getting people from the community to come into the prison and talk to the Community Involvement Group. Again, trying to narrow that gap between, you know, I'm a bad guy and you're a good guy and you know let's kind of see if we can't meld that together. And that worked out very well. In fact, the community Involvement Group was a program of the year or something. It was mentioned by the American Correctional Association. So, we did pretty good with that.

That kind of led me to continue the process. What can I do to spread this around? Then the state planning agency job came available and I said this is great I can now take these kinds of ideas and share them statewide. Which I thought would be reasonable. And once I got to that point and was there for a couple of years, in fact, I was there when my fabulous wife came and she came walking down the... we had a hallway and I had a little office... and she came walking down the hallway with a grin this big because this was seven years after we had had our daughter Noreen. And she said guess what? I said what? I'm pregnant. So that allowed for a huge celebration, and we then produced Michael Johnson. First, we had Noreen Johnson then we now we got Michael Johnson.

Just around that time just while she was pregnant, I got a job with the federal government in Washington DC. So, what I did was I moved by myself up to Northern Virginia where I made a deal with the Department of Corrections. I said you let me sleep in the guard’s quarters of one of your little jails up there and I’ll teach the staff various things. And they say: “oh good idea.” So that's what I did. I slept there, got up, went into Washington DC, did my job, came back and had dialogues and training programs with the staff and that worked out great.

Then in May, Michael came along, our son Michael. And a few months later we found a townhouse to live in and rest in Montgomery Hill got back together again and while I was with LEAA, I think I was called a Criminal Justice Specialist, my focus was to help people who were getting grants look at ways to provide less division between convicted people and unconvicted people. And throughout all of that experience it occurred to me that most of the convicted people I was dealing with were people of color and in the east coast the rates of incarceration are disproportionate between white and black. Doesn't mean you don't have white inmates, you do, but you have a higher percentage of the population is going to be African American or Latino. You hardly get any Mormons. You hardly get any Jews. You hardly get any Quakers, right. You get mostly poor people who are not connected or bonded to other things. Bonded like to a job, to a family, to a church, to a synagogue, to a temple. Those people who are bonded have more to lose with bad behavior than people who are not bonded. There's a whole big thing called the bonding theory that talks about this.

So, when I got to LEAA I thought this is great. I was able to go to different states and talk to large groups of people about, you know, what they could do and encourage them about how to do what they're doing. LEAA then died. The politics, you know, kind of went down like this. And I had to look around and find somewhere else to be. And the Office of Juvenile Justice and Joint Commission Prevention became a depository for all the LEAA people. And so, I went there. Again, trying to use my position to advance communication between the haves and the have-nots. Between the people who think they counted and the people who thought they didn't to try and see if we couldn't do, and this was before Johnson, sit and reason together. So, I very much identified with that. 

One of the things that that I did with OJJDP was I came up with this idea: we should let people in the states know they're doing a good job. The way to do that was to give them a certificate. How much would it cost just to develop a certificate? We could print, it we had a printing office, we could print it. We could say: “Office of Juvenile Justice Delinquency Prevention Project of Valuing Worth” and you know write some stuff on. So, I propose that idea and this again gives you an idea of the bureaucracy. And you know I’m down here and I propose it to this guy who then took credit for it and proposed it to this guy, okay who then took credit for it propose it to this guy. But it worked out very well because what it did was if... and we didn't take responsibility for choosing who the projects were. We asked the state to nominate their best project and then we would look at that and say okay, and then we would go and give them a reward.

Now the uppers thought this was a great idea because it gave them a chance to go to the places to present the awards. And I can remember, you know, being like a little kid at an airport going everybody gets a plane ride but me but it worked out very well. And again, it fits with this theme of can we bring people closer together? And they said well, you know why should we tell somebody in Dubuque they're doing a good job? So not only do you tell the people in Dubuque but then you share that to all the other states and say look what Dubuque is doing isn’t that a great thing? Again pulling people together.

And unfortunately, again politics, me one of us being one of the five, I had to leave and that got me to CRS. Where you know, I immediately adopted and accepted and supported the idea of let's get people to sit down and reason together. You know because when you think about it, racism is based on a social construct that has no meaning. All right so well you know white people are better than black people. Well okay, Colin Powell is smarter than I am, you Republican, but he's smarter than I am. Oprah Winfrey is smarter than I am. Michelle Obama is smarter than I am. Barack Obama is, he won a Nobel Peace Prize, he's smarter than I am. Okay, so if we're going to talk about intelligence, black people are more intelligent than white people. No no no no no. You know Jack Dempsey could have knocked out Muhammad Ali. Just silly stupid arguments like that, you know. And so, it just occurred to me that if we could all like...what was his name George King? The fella that they beat up so bad in LA. The police. Hang on, (Rodney King – Bill Froehlich: ). Thank you. Rodney. You know can we all just get along? And I thought well, okay, let's see what we can do. And so, CRS was like an answer to my prayers for that. But nothing comes pure and nothing comes easy. So, you have to say: “okay you're giving me this spot to do things but you're going to load me with requirements about how to do it, when you do it, who to do it with.” Things like that.

And the idea there is okay, and this you know sort of speaks to one of your questions was how do you deal with the bureaucracy, and my advice to staff now and to staff then was learn the language of the bureaucracy. Put yourself in their place. What do they want? And just like in basic conflict resolution right, what are the issues, what do they want, okay what are the positions, what do they think is going to get to what they want right? Go beyond that to interest, right? Why do they want what they want? And in doing that I said to myself: “okay, I'm all for sitting down to reason together. I'm all for getting people to deal with each other.” Management on the other hand is all about reports. It's all about show me documentation. Okay. What do they need for documentation? Well they have to have an alert. Okay what does that, you know, consist of? Well it has to say what the issues are. Okay so how can I write that? I can write that by saying according to media reports, according to input from, according to reports of blah blah blah there may be jurisdictional issues involved in this situation. How hard is that? All right so you have. I don't know if you remember, there used to be a way on computers, on the typewriter you could make a stock answer. Right, I can't remember what they called it but I would just go to my little computer thing.

41:43     Bill Froehlich:      Well, this is perfect by the way because I would love for you to take me through a case. Perhaps a case that was engaging for folks to hear about. You know, sharing what you are comfortable with sharing. And so maybe you want to start with the alert, you know, describing this process generically and then take me through how it worked in a memorable engaging case. But I’ve not used a typewriter since Middle School, so I don’t.

42:17     Tim Johnson:       Yeah well, I still put stuff in an icebox so, work with me. So, if I learn the language of what they want it's pretty easy to stick it in there. And the language during my time was make an alert, make an assessment, and then do conciliation reports. That was it. Now they had rules they said you must do X number of alerts per year, you must do Y number of assessments per year. Because you could close on alert. You could close a case on assessment. Not jurisdictional, parties not involved, or interested whatever, and then you had to do conciliation report.

Then they said when I was in New York, they said you must do 15 cases, completed cases, a year. To be satisfactory you must do 15 cases a year. And I said: “okay.” I think it went from June to July, I can't remember. But about, I don't know, three or four months into that year, I had completed 15 cases. So, I went to my regional director who was a woman named Tommy Jones and when she died, I think the perfume industry slumped because she didn't go like this with perfume, she went like this. And so, I went into it, and I said well Tommy this is my 15th completed case. “Oh that's wonderful. I said “okay I'm gonna go home now I’ll see you next July.” Oh no no no no. But no! But no! She would say, just to kind of demonstrate the artificialness of, you know, we have to do this, this, and this because that's what another part of CRS is focused on. Show me the reports. Show me data that I can bring to Congress and say we did blank blank blank.

So, I thought okay what you need to do is figure out how to speak the language they want to hear but still get your job of sitting down and reasoning together done. I would do a lot of cases, and the reason I would do a lot of cases because I wanted to do, I thought this was important. I thought this was, you know, this was my contribution. This was my shot. So at the end of a term, I would have racked up 40 or 50 cases that year. There were regions, fully staffed regions, who racked up less cases than I did by myself. But to their, in their defense, it was easier for me to do cases because I was in the New York region so I could do all of New Jersey, I could do a lot of the New York metropolitan area, which accounted for a lot of cases, without really much travel. But if you're in Denver, it takes you a day to get somewhere and a day to do it and a day to get back. So, less cases.

So, if I know the language that they want to hear, I know the things that they want to tick off, I can put that in my

reports. I can make my reports useful to headquarters. Then I, at one point, I left the field and went to headquarters, had a job at headquarters, you know, which just reinforced, you know what I was saying. And I would call people up and I would say: “change that report.” “Say this this this this thing.” “Why should I do that, that's my report!” “Yeah, I know but that's not what they want to hear, you know.” And it just fed the bureaucracy, if you will. And so, I said earlier, we did lots of training. So as a response to a problem we’d say alright we’ll train. And they said “well training is not mediation so we're not counting those as cases.” So I said “okay, all right that's fine.” So now instead of calling it training, call it interaction between disputants because what I would do is I'm going to ask people in the community to sit down with people from the police department or the school or whatever and then say “okay let's talk about biased-based policing. Let's talk about how communities can better able to interact with police. Let's talk about you know blah blah blah.” It was training for sure, that involved two groups of people sitting down and reading together and that's what they wanted to hear.

So, I developed several training guides that were you know, you know, you're a professor. Is that correct? Okay so you know what I'm talking about. You know if you're gonna go in and do conflict resolution 101 for a group of freshmen you're pretty well set. You could pretty well do it without a whole lot.

48:41     Bill Froehlich:      Just did it Monday and Tuesday for a group. Right, a couple hours of prep.

48:45     Tim Johnson:       All right so now you've got that down right. And you could say boom boom boom. Well same thing with me. So, a lot of times people would, you know, people in this jurisdiction would talk to people in that jurisdiction and say we’ll call Tim Johnson: , he can get this. And so, you organize people sitting down and reasoning together. You just didn't call it what you used to call it. It's the same deal though. And that, you know, worked well for me. It worked very well because, you know, each year I would get this high number of cases completed and you know they would say well okay, Tim you're outstanding this year. You know, the federal government to have those evaluations, which mean about this much, but they're saying you're outstanding. Then if they yelled at me and I would say: “wait a minute, I'm outstanding, what are you kidding me?” So, it worked out well. But the point is that if you're going to work in a large organization like CRS, learn the language. Learn what people in headquarters want, what management wants, and make that part of what you do. And if you can do that then you're fine.

Now you asked about a case.

50:14     Bill Froehlich:       That would be great. Yeah, I’d love to get more detail and context about what would happen in a particular case. One that was engaging.

50:19     Tim Johnson:       I’ll give you two examples. One which I withdrew from and one which I saw through completion. In one I was contacted by leadership in the minority community because they knew who CRS was and they said: “we are considering a strike.” I said” okay who are you going to strike against?” They said “we're going to strike against the entire city.” This is a mid-sized city. Had their own baseball team so they were cool. And I said “well, when you say you're gonna you know strike against the city, well first of all can you tell me why?” “Yes, because the mayor.” And then they listed a bunch of things: doesn't hire us, doesn't focus on us, doesn't respond to us. Things like that. “Okay and what will your strike consist of?” “We are no longer shopping in any stores within the city limits. We are no longer using city transportation” And you know, things like that to affect the economy. I said “well have you tried to talk to city leadership about this?” “They won't talk to us.” I said “so have you tried to talk to the mayor?” “Won't talk to us.” “Would it be okay if I reached out to the mayor to see if we couldn't sit down and reason together?” “Well it's not going to do you any good but you can try.”

So, I met with the mayor. A very dynamic guy. Had a big plaque on his wall from the army. He had been an airborne soldier. You know, guy who jumped out of planes. And so, we traded war stories. You know, oh I worked with that group and that kind of thing. And we established a very nice relationship, which you know conciliation 101, establish a relationship. I said “here's what I'm hearing from leadership in your community and these leaders included representatives from this organization that organization blah blah blah and what they would like is to sit down and deal with these issues.” And he said “I absolutely want to do that. I'll go there, they can come here, or we can go to a neutral spot. I absolutely want to do that. Let's see if we can't resolve it.”

So, I went back to the community, and I said “well, as luck would have it the mayor is interested in talking to you about this.” And the people I was dealing with said “well, we don't care. We're not going to deal with him.” I said “well what's the point?” And somebody said “well the point is we want him out and we're going to strike and we're going to get people to vote for us.” And I said “well now you're talking about a political thing here. You're not talking about something that's jurisdictional to us. I'm out.” And I walked away.

Now I was not able, just by policy, to talk to the mayor ever again, or to talk to the press. So, you know, that was just a case where I could not do anything for that community because they've already chosen another way. Different case.

54:20     Bill Froehlich:      Do you mind if I ask you a few follow-up questions about that case first? So, is this a case where you did an alert? Found some news stories and reached out or did, you said they reached out to you...

54:42     Tim Johnson:       They reached out to me. Which I alerted. I contacted my leadership... with allegations of it... It appears to be jurisdictional... move to assessment.

54:55     Bill Froehlich:       Okay and so then the rest of the conversation was all part of your assessment, is that right? Okay, and then the case was closed because you didn't have jurisdiction under the initial authorization. The pre–James Byrd Matthew Shepard of the 1964 Civil Rights Act. So that makes sense.

When you had these initial conversations with the minority group in the city that was planning this strike, the city-wide strike, were these questions, these conversations, over the phone? Did you chat with multiple stakeholders? You said you met with the mayor in person so that was clearly part of your assessment. But, were all your meetings in person or did you already have a pre-existing relationship with the minority group?

55:44     Tim Johnson:       No, no, I never met any of them. Had never been in that city. But when I got to the assessment stage, I had the wherewithal to go to the city which required, I guess it was about a three/four-hour trip out. And I met with the community that night. Spent the night in a hotel. Met with the mayor that morning and then met with the community again that following evening and said, you know, “thanks no thanks” and then drove back to my home.

So, because going, staying then that second night was not economically sensible. So from I know, I got home around 12:30 or something. But again, that's part of the deal. That's part of you know, the limitations that we have. You know, some people would say “well I would have just stayed the next day and you know, used the following day as a travel day.” But you know, my focus wasn't on how easy can I make it. It was more on how much more can I do. And so you know. And the following day, after coming home, got up the next day and I wrote the closure report. So it all, you know, I closed on assessment based on, you know, that this was not jurisdictional, this was political.

57:44     Bill Froehlich:      Yeah, that that makes a lot of sense to me. And I appreciate you highlighting all of that. Just one more follow-up question about the mayor. When you tried to get entry into that conversation to chat with the mayor, was it easy to get through to him to have that meeting or were there specific, was there a challenge, in that conversation? Did you have to highlight confidentiality aspects of CRS to get into that conversation with the mayor?

58:13     Tim Johnson:       No I had that conversation. But to get the appointment was not a problem at all. I called the office of the mayor and said “I'm Tim Johnson: . I'm at the United States Department of Justice. I'd like to set up a meeting with the mayor about concerns and problems that we've become aware of. Would that be possible?” And their response was, “what time?”

58:40     Bill Froehlich:       Great. That's, I appreciate that, your articulation that you just said you're a representative from the DOJ. The mayor's office was open to the conversation about that topic, That’s, I appreciate that follow-up, so I'd be delighted to hear about... oh sorry go ahead.

58:58     Tim Johnson:       One of the things about being with CRS, we had we had little identification cards. You know, little flaps that said Department of Justice. You open it up, there's your picture and stuff. And that gave you authority. That gave you, you know, people stopped and said “oh, okay.”

Oh okay, as an example, I was on lunch in Little Italy New York and minding my own business. Not dealing with anything and here comes a car and followed directly by another car and then “bepp beep beep beep beep beep” and this front car stops and three guys get out of the second car, one with a baseball bat, right? And the guy in the front car gets out and the front car is African American. These three guys are clearly Italian, clearly Italian. And they're yelling epithets at the African American guy. “You blah blah blah blah blah. “And so I had my little suit and tie on all right and so I reached into my pocket. I pulled out my credentials and I walked between them and I said “whoa whoa whoa.” I held up that the little flap. The Department of Justice. You guys don't want to be doing this. This is not the time or place for this. You really need to get back in your car and get out of here. And I closed it and I said to the African American, said “you need to get back in your car and whatever this is about forget it and go.” And so the African American was clearly relieved because he knew he was going to get his ass kicked and he gets back in the car. The three guys, you know, they assumed I was like FBI or something, which I’m not. And they just kind of “you guys are everywhere,” and got in their car and they drove away.

But just having that cachet, that that you know, “I'm with the Department of Justice” you know, gave me the, I don't know, the wherewithal to be able to do something like that. Leaving the Department when I retired, I missed it. I missed that. I missed being able to go anywhere, talk to anybody, about anything. “Nope that's my badge look at that.” “Oh well now I'll listen to you.” And it takes a little bit of getting used to, becoming a regular human being. If you talk to a retired police officer, they'll tell you the same thing. They'll say “you know I'm not that guy anymore. You know, if I'm a cop in New York and I move to Oklahoma, nobody cares.” And so I did take that responsibility and I enjoyed that authority very very much.

1:02:13  Bill Froehlich:       It's really amazing how you used that authority to intervene in this, you know tiny, this little conflict while you were eating lunch. It's such an illustration of how the badge is a valuable tool to gain entry into conversations. I do wonder, generally once you were able to gain entry, did you distance yourself from DOJ in some conversations because you know, some folks know the DOJ is an investigatory unit. Or DOJ, you know, BIPOC communities might be concerned the DOJ is really going to use their authority to treat black and brown individuals in an inappropriate manner. So how did that tension work. So, you get in, did you put it away, or what happened?

 

1:03:03  Tim Johnson:       Well that presented, the fact that I'm white presented challenges. And the fact that I was with the federal government presented challenges. You know, “I’m from the federal government, I’m here to help” is sort of a joke. So, the way I got around that was saying “I'm Tim Johnson: . I told them that first. I'm Tim Johnson: . And the federal government has different levels of how to respond to things. All right the best level is you. The best level is you sit down with people here, not from Washington, not from out of town, but you guys sit down and come up with your own solution. That's the best way. Not the only way. I can help you with the best way. I can help you sit down and reason together. If you don't want that, then you can go to the U.S. attorney and say we want to file a suit. U.S. attorney may or may not accept that.

Yesterday, you know, just recently in the news. You know, you looked at all the different times that the U.S. Department of Justice declined to pursue cases against various former administration officials. So, you could do that, or if you want you could get an attorney and sue and see if you know, you might, you know, get something out of that. However, you do that, that's going to cost you money. It's going to take a long time and it's not really going to do anything to change the way people feel about each other. So, if you want to give a shot to what I think is the very best solution, which is you, I can help you to do that. And most of the time they went for it. Most of the time they said okay.

Sometimes not so much. I had a case. One of the people I worked with is a fellow named Moses Jones. Moses was an African American and sometimes they would send us out together for a case. And we went to a case for a small city in Yew Nork where they were outraged because the allegation was that the jail personnel hung a young African American inmate and they said “we ain't putting up with no lynching” and things like that. So they had a big meeting in the basement of a church and they, you know, during the assessment of the alert stage, no assessment stage, they said well you can come and talk to us at that meeting. So, Moses and I showed up. And in the basement it's very crowded and the minister, whoever was saying, you know, “we are against this, we're against that and we don't want this, we don't want that, and we're going to demand justice, and we're looking for ways to do that.” And now keep in mind that I was the only white person in the room, okay. And one of the two or three that had a suit and tie on. Moses had a suit and tie. I had a suit and tie. I think the minister had a suit and tie on. Finally the minister said “well, we got a white man from the Department of Justice come down here and talk to us.” And I looked around like this. Me? Oh, is it me? And that was not the only time that Moses and I were in that kind of a situation.

We were in another meeting, quite similar, and somebody in the one side of the room was saying, and Moses was standing right next to me, he said and this guy said, “who the white man” and Moses said “yeah, who that white man?” And so you know, if you inject a little humor into it, you know, people, you know, kind of will loosen up a little bit. But you know, things like that, you tell each other and you kind of get over a little bit of you know, this resistance. And the resistance is real. You know you've got people who have been discriminated against for their entire lives. It's always by white people and that they have not had one positive... relationship or anything with anybody white. It's always been bad. Tou know so it's very difficult to say you know, I'm a good guy. I'm not a bad guy. I'm you know, I'm here to work with you, not at you...

And so, one of the things that all conciliators for the for the government have to do is get over that you know, “I'm from the government and you're not.” You have to say you know, I'm, I, the government has this very small window of opportunity and clearly it's not large enough. You know, you've got less than 30 people covering the entire country now. We had more. We had about 50 when I was there and not nearly enough. Not nearly enough. And what the company, what the agency can do now, is respond to the biggest outburst that exists and what they should be doing is responding to the smallest things. And if they respond to the small things, the big things don't happen. Solve the little problems, the big problems don't happen.

But again, now we're talking budgets and politics and why should I give this guy money you know. If you look at Rand Paul to mention a name “we don't need CRS.” “We don't need you know, this federal intervention.” Well nobody else is doing it. You know we're the only ones doing it. So, getting over the humps is sometimes a big challenge. If you don't get over the hump with reason, get over the hump with money. So yeah, and get over the hump of money by saying well you can solve this here and now for free. Confidentially. Right now. Or you can pay a lot of money, maybe get something, maybe not. So, it's up to you.

1:10:04  Bill Froehlich:      I like, I like that. What you said is very succinct and concrete and I appreciate how... you're saying that the best level to work with through the federal government is you and I can help you do that. That's a really nice framing and one I think that I might tell my mediation students this coming semester when they're working with the parties. That's... that's great. I like it a lot. So, I appreciate that. You, I had interrupted you. You had told me about the case with the minority community and you met with the mayor and then realized this was a political issue and there was no jurisdiction. You were about to move on to a second case that you worked on to conclusion so if you could take me through that that would be wonderful.

1:10:51  Tim Johnson:       l met with the leadership of the African American community in a town. They had a list of grievances against the police department: bias-based policing, lack of response, targeting youth, those kinds of things. So, I alerted that and then to assess it I reached out to leadership in the African American community and when I reached out to the leadership, I would say: “well okay minister so-and-so who else is a leader in your community, in the African American community, besides yourself?” “Well, we got the NAACP guy.” “Oh great, what's his name?” “Well Joe Blo.” “Okay do you think it'd be all right if we, you and I, and Joe met because I’m sure he shares some of these things.” “Yeah, yeah, yeah.” “Can you think of any other leaders that you know, ought to be at that meeting between you and me to figure out you know, very specifically what all the issues are?” “Oh yeah, yeah.” So, we'd get a list. Then I would say: “All right you know can we set a date, say next Tuesday in the evening or you know whenever.” Usually, the meetings with community were in the evening because people had jobs. And then sometimes my initial contact would contact the other leaders. Sometimes I would have to contact them. But the idea being I don't want to deal with just one voice. I want as many organizations within the community as possible to agree that this is an issue.

So, I did that. And I went to the... town, met with him. Overcame some initial you know, we don't trust the government, we don't trust the department of justice and your... rules are old-fashioned and not useful, and the civil rights act didn't work. And things like that. And then sell them on the idea of helping them solve their own problem. And it's a selling job. You know, I think a lot of your students might think well I’ll become a mediator, sit down in my office, and wait for people to come in. No you gotta sell it. You gotta you know... And we're not doing a very good job with that you know, culturally. We're not doing a very good job.

But once you, once I did that, I said: “okay you know I’m going to write down all these issues all right because I want to be able to present them to the police department.” Okay... then what? Then what’s going to happen? Well, they're probably going to have some answers, or some denials, or in some cases they might agree with you. I don't know. But let me do that. Let me... go and talk. And then I contacted Chief of Police. “Hi, Tim Johnson: , Department of Justice. Like to talk to you.” “Are you with civil rights?” “No, I’m not with civil rights.” Because then they feared a consent decree. “You know well, who are you, what is this?” And then you explain, you know “with this little window of opportunity and we can do this without publicity. We don't need, you know, a bunch of local, you know, Geraldo Riveras, to come in and say wow this is the worst thing ever. You know let's be reasonable.” And the Chief said okay. I said “all right great let me come and sit down with you and your staff, you know, whoever you know, your administrative staff, or whoever you want. And if you want to involve city managers or whomever, I don't, it's up to you. I want to talk to you. Now you tell me who else should be in the room. That's fine with me.”

Went and sat down with the Chief. He had a captain, a lieutenant, and some sort of planner. I don't, I can't remember what his job was. But he wasn’t with the police department. He was like a city planner. And I said “okay.” I met with some people representative of the African American community. These are the things that they said. Now in my experience, these kinds of allegations are based on either rumors or one incident, not normal operation. “Well, that's right yeah, we agree with that.” “But they still exist, these problems still exist.”

So, for example, a police officer approaches a car for a routine traffic stop and stands behind the front window, doesn't go right up to the window, and say “Hi I'm officer friendly.” Stands behind the front windows sort of parallel with the back seat, not the front seat. And you have to turn around like this to talk to him. That's just rude. Isn't it? This is what the community would say. Right, and the police officer very often has his hand on the butt of his pistol. Well now that that's just intimidating. Why is that happening? Well, if you if you think about it you say “okay, I'm a cop. I'm stopping a car. I don't know who's in it, don't know what the situation is. I better be careful. I better be very careful.” Because there have been times when police officers have been shot and killed during a traffic stop where the person in the car might be escaping from a scene of a crime or whatever. Might be nuts and has a gun right next to him and as soon as the cop shows his face, he goes bang. There was a Maryland state trooper by the name of Wolf who 40 or 50 years ago that's exactly what happened to him. So now, when you explain things like that people in the community are what. “I’m not, I don't have a gun. I'm not that person.” And then you follow up with okay but how does he know? How does the cop know before he gets to you? Now, there's no excuse for the cop to use derogatory terms. No excuse at all, right? And when that happens it should be reported blah blah blah. So, by going back and forth with these kinds of scenarios with the police folks, they feel a little more comfortable in saying: “okay well bad things sometimes happen but that's not our policy and that's not what we want.” And then I followed that up with “well how about this, how about you get some folks from the police department, some line officers from the police department, patrol officers, say five, and I'll get some people from the community, and we'll sit down we'll talk about these very specific allegations about what the police think about that, what the community thinks about that and how they can come together to resolve those kinds of issues.”

Do you think that a patrol officer wants the community to feel like he is an intrusion? That he is a storm trooper? That he is an invader? Or does the cop want the community to feel like he's part of the community not apart from it. And if you're in the community what is necessary for the cop to get to that point of having... them feel they're part of, not apart from, the community? Let them sit down and reason together about how to do that. Then come up with a set of recommendations to go back to the Chief of Police, sometimes written down as an agreement, sometimes just notes jotted down and see where to go from there. “Well, okay we'll do that.” And so you do that and now they have... a reasonable platform on which to talk. So sometimes they'll say: “well we... want the police to understand us better.” “Okay, great what should they know?” “We're good people.” All of you? Are all white people good? I don't think so. Charlie Manson was nasty. You know John Dylan was a killer. These are bad people. At the time I wanted to say Richard Nixon, but I didn't. But... you know to be reasonable we have to you know, allow people to come to their own conclusions.

It does note, another thing that I would say to folks is I... would say “well we can go to Congress and Congress can pass a law.” It'll be a law, right? That there'll be no segregation anymore. Now when I was born there was segregation, all right. When I was born black people literally had to sit in the back of the bus. That there were laws on the books that said white and black people couldn't marry right. That was the law so we can... change the laws. In 1964 we had the Civil Rights Act. Did it solve every problem? No. Did it change everybody's attitude? No. How can we do that? We can do that by sitting down and reasoning together to say “okay from now on I’m going to understand my responsibilities as a citizen in police contact. As a police officer in contact with the community. And... then you work from there. It doesn't mean that the problem is resolved forever and ever and everybody's going to sit down and sing we shall overcome. What it means is that at that time, at that period of time, those people got a chance to sit down and talk to each other and... come to some resolutions that allowed for peace to continue. Which I think is what CRS is best at.

Now CRS is, also throughout our history, we've written massive memorandum understanding. Pat Lynn did one in... Ohio. Massive you know 30 40 pages. And she won a Ferguson back in the 70s, I think Ferguson, back in the 70s. And... then you go well did that change anything? No. No. Because then you still have cops you know shooting each other. 

1:22:37  Bill Froehlich:      I want to make sure I’m understanding you correctly. So one of your colleagues Pat Flynn would write memorandums of understanding between police and community for policing-community interactions. But what I think I'm hearing you say is that didn't change perceptions and attitudes between police and minority communities. Whereas having people come down, come in a conversation, having you facilitate a conversation between these five handful of police officers and handful of community members who felt disparaged in some way by police, whether it was rumor or actual that... actually led to more durable solutions and changed some attitudes whereas the MOU did not.

1:23:22  Tim Johnson:       I would have to say both work. Both change attitudes. One is organic and... the other is artificial. It's artificial in that two years later the people who point to the... consent decree or memorandum of understanding or whatever weren't involved in drafting it. Weren't involved in and signing it. Really don't care. So it... whereas the people who were involved at a more visceral level, more direct level, have a better way of handling things. Have a better way of understanding things. Both the memorandum of understanding and the getting together only last as long as people continually sit down and talk about it. So you would... hope that that the police and the community leadership would continue the conversations, would continue to talk.

The Chief of Police in Newark, New Jersey and I can't remember his name. He later became a big deal in one of the national organizations. He... had a really smart idea. He went around and tried to identify community leaders. And... A community leader by the way is people other people listen to. Not necessarily, you know a minister but sometimes a minister. Sometimes a barber shop. But let's get people other people listen to. And then when bad things happen, he would have his cops go out and get those people, physically get those people. Bring them into the headquarters and talk to them. Here's what happened. Here's what we're doing. Here's what you need to tell your people that you influence. Absent that, you have rumors. And... one particular case that that this worked out perfectly was a cop goes up to a car full of African American youth, hand on his weapon, and was talking to the kids. Slipped, right? And the gun came out, went off, and killed the driver of the car. And he slipped! Right. And rather than assume that the kid was assassinated by a racist police officer what the Chief did was he called those people in and said “here's what happened. We're investigating it. We're not shirking our duties. If it... happened the way the cops say it did we'll figure that out with forensics and location of the bullet or whatever.” This was before the cameras by the way. “And we take full responsibility.” What that means is that you know it was a wrongful death and the city will take full responsibility for that. So now, all these leaders come out and they say all right something happened. But, we got the word from the Chief here's what's going to go on and so calm down. And he avoided a lot of destruction that way. But keep in mind that... all of that was based on the premise of sitting down and reasoning together right and... you know we... had in CRS they still do, we have... 

1:27:07  Bill Froehlich:      Do you mind if I pause on... a newer example just for a second? Because it's a lovely example of... reasoning together as you... highlighted and it seems like he had, the Chief, had built relationships with those leaders, whether they're official or unofficial, in the community to spread, transparently spread, information to key leaders so that the information could travel back out in a trusted way. Rather than hearing from the Chief they were hearing from the barbershop or the religious official or the imam or whomever that was trusted in the community. Maybe it's the football coach, right? Did you in that with, that Chief in New Jersey, did CRS have a relationship with that Chief? Help him work on the... or her... work on these, this program? Could you say a little bit more about that relationship, if one exists.

1:28:05  Tim Johnson:       We knew who he was. He knew who we were. He did this on his own. He... did this by himself and we use it as a model.

1:28:15  Bill Froehlich:      Smart yeah. It's great because he's, based on what you've said, you can solve these problems on your own and by highlighting that for other communities to say “look this is the way one Chief did it, you can do that, you can do something similar.” It's just one example.

1:28:35  Tim Johnson:       Exactly, yeah.

 

1:28:36  Bill Froehlich:      Just for a second, I wanted to go back to the... I appreciate that the MOU and engaged conversations distinction between the community leaders and the police. Do you know of any communities that you've worked in, or your colleagues have worked in, by name or just generically, that formalize that process into something that worked for the long term for more than just two or three years of leaders meeting to express their concerns with police who are on the front lines. Is there a sustainable model... for that process? Or did they, were there particular reasons why they disintegrated and... the model was... just didn’t last longer than a couple of months or a couple of years?

1:29:34  Tim Johnson:       I am unaware of one that has lasted you know 10, 15, 20 years and the rationale behind that is that the people involved aren't there anymore. That the people who created it from the community, the people who were involved in it from the government aren't... there anymore. They just aren't.

You're familiar with police community relations. All right and we thought it's a great idea... You know, Tatranowitz and all those other guys, came up with a really good ideas. And some police departments shifted their philosophy from one of quote law enforcement unquote to one of police community relations, okay. So the philosophy shifted while that Chief was there. And when that Chief left it drifted back, right. Because it's easier to not be involved with the community either as a principal of a high school, or Chief of Police, or a mayor. And the mayor changes. “Now we're gonna go the other way, and we're gonna do this, and we're gonna do that.” So I’m not aware of any of it lasting longer than the people involved. Which is a shame.

1:31:08  Bill Froehlich:      Yeah, thank you. I... wonder you were talking about the community where that took place and you had talked about the alert. You talked about the assessment. You talked about how you brought people together. Would you consider that a formal mediation when you were facilitating conversations between four or the five police and the five individuals or part of your role as a conciliator? You’re smiling so.

1:31:48  Tim Johnson:       I’m smiling because I consider mediation... is getting people at the table to communicate. Getting people to recognize what the other’s positions and interests are. Right. I... say that's mediation. The agencies did not agree. In order for it to be a mediation you had to have either a memorandum of understanding or a mediation agreement. Which you know, documented if you will, wrote down these agreements and was signed and notarized and all sorts of things like that. Which I think deterred people from the process rather than encourage people in the process. “You know now I got to sign something. No, no, now it's an official.”

And in all my years I probably did 10 mediations. And... each time you had to write it, and then you had to send it in to the Office of General Counsel who then reviewed it, and then changed it, and then sent it back to you, and then you had to send it back to the people. You know they would edit it and so it... became cumbersome and when people in a family have a fight you know they don't, they're not looking for a document, they're looking for a resolution and... so they didn't... want to go through all this rigmarole. If you look at a couple who gets divorced and then they fight about child custody. And well the court says you can have two hours supervised every other Thursday or whatever. That's not really resolving the issue. If you want to really resolve the issue you've got to resolve it between the mother and the father and say you know, our relationship didn't work out. I recognize that you still want to have a relationship with your son or your daughter. What can we do to make that happen and... those, I think those kinds of agreements last longer than you know court documents. And in many cases with the divorce people the documents just become an obstacle and one of the other parents just says forget it I'll just move on. Which does a disservice to the kid.

1:34:23  Bill Froehlich:       Right yeah, that's right. Thank you for that. I... wonder just to go back a little bit for either of the two scenarios you described, or generally, what type of preparation would you do to go into the community to conduct an assessment or to engage with stakeholders in?

1:34:49  Tim Johnson:       Well I... would do as much research about who's in the community, what the population is, what the employment is, what the economic situations are, whether or not there are very specific white areas or black areas. I'd look at the schools to see if there were disproportionate things happening in the schools. So I... would have as much information as I could get walking into the assessment. But I would always ask questions during the assessment, and I would say what else is going on, what other issues do you see? And then you know, I was laughing about you know, what I call mediation, what they call mediation. I would purposely word my reports so that it... gave the people in headquarters fodder for reporting back to Congress. You know I would say “facilitated contact between disputants.” You know, “facilitated agreements among disputants.” Those kinds of things. Just so that they got what they needed, got what I needed and to move forward like that.

1:36:28  Bill Froehlich:      In a case like the one you've been describing where the police meet with the residents, what would a final report look like? You previously described four statements as a set alert, assessment, reports on what you were doing, or how you did it, and then a final report. What would a final report look like?

1:36:50  Tim Johnson:       Final report would say you know we review that we assess, we alerted and assessed, and made contact with, facilitated agreements, and one of those agreements was that the police, the line policing community would meet together to examine issues. The community met with the police department, the following issues were examined, the following agreements to those issues included you know, this, that, or the other thing. Very often it would include police reaching out to community organizations to explain citizen rights, to explain police rights. And that kind of thing. And sometimes I would then say “wait a minute Tim, you can get two cases out of this.” And you know again I would, I would go back to saying one alert. You know that police needed technical assistance on developing training program for community and... then I would go in and do it all over again and show them how to do that. And like we said earlier... you know if you are a trainer, if you're comfortable with developing lesson plans and whatnot, it's pretty easy to walk in and say “okay you know, here's... 10 things you're going to do.”

I’m... involved with a restorative justice practice here in in my area and we base our stuff on the international institute of restorative practices out of Pennsylvania and they say we got five questions. You know, what happened? What were you thinking? What are you thinking now? Who got hurt and what are you going to do about it? And so, I recently was asked if I could do a refresher of course on... that and... most of the refreshers you know, they say just ask the five questions. So in my deal I said “well, what happens during one of these processes?” You know one of the things, one of the common things, is people ask for an apology. So, we should be able to articulate that. Ans so in my little lesson plan I say “what are the parts of an apology?” “What are the do's and don'ts of an apology?” So, if you're going to facilitate you know something like that, we should, you should know, what to look for and... what to do instead of apologizing and what mindset you should have, what principles you should have and how... you should listen. And then... is that all you're going to do? You're going to ask the five questions? Boom now you're done? “You should go beyond the five questions.” “How do you do that?” “No I don't know.” All right so what I did was I wrote beyond the five questions which includes talking about personal responsibility, your authentic self, trying to find out who you are now who you're going to be, and pointing out that if you are a juvenile your brain is not done. Right? And... I found... I also introduced the word yaicoy. Y-a-i-c-o-y.

1:40:39  Bill Froehlich:       I don’t have a clue.

 

1:40:41  Tim Johnson:       Yeah. I made it up. And yaicoy means: you are in charge of you. Which focuses on the, you know, the responsibilities. And then I say, well they'll say, we'll say “what happened?” And they'll say “I got angry.” You said “you got angry?” You know, and this is out of a training piece that I'm gonna do next week. “You got angry. So you got mad. You lost control. You blew your stock. You blew your top. You went through the roof. You went nuts. You freaked out. You went off the deep end. You snapped. You lost your temper. You blew a fuse. You flipped out. You went bunkers. You went []. You got upset. You were uncontrollable. You lost it. You blew up. You blew your cool. You went berserk. You went crazy. Had a fit. is that close to what you're saying to me?” And you know, all of a sudden they think they're talking to George Carlin and... then they say “yeah, that’s it.” And I said “...what's the common denominator?” The common denominator is you weren't in control, something else was. The other guy who made you mad. The situation whatever it was, you weren't in control. So, you don't want that.

And then the final thing, which I found amusing, is the brain. The brain not, you know, being fully developed yet. And I'd say, there's a word, neuro maturation which has to do with the growth of the brain. And so “the brain is made up of gray matter and white matter. Gray matter stores all the information while white matter forms the connections between different parts of the brain. And... the gray matter...  matures at about 11 or 12. White matter doesn't... mature until you’re in your 20s right. The title to that particular slide is “white matter matters.” So, all of that to say that if we don't continuously talk to one another and say: “you know what I found?” Like I didn't know about the white matter gray matter thing. I knew you know, differences between the brain but I didn't, I wasn't able to articulate it quite like that quote does. And... the quote is you know, nowhere near scientific, you know. It's just white matter grey matter, you know. Then talk about the . . . Whatever it is. It's... meant to talk to kids. So how do you do that?

So, one of the things I tried throughout my career with CRS is: can we share our experiences somehow? Can we, can... the conciliation specialist in California explain to me what they did in a particular case? So, what were the obstacles? How did you overcome those obstacles? What were the things you learned? What should I do if I'm faced with that situation? What's the best way to blank blank blank blank? And CRS was very remiss in allowing that to happen. At one point they said “no conciliation specialist in a region can talk to any other conciliation specialist in any other region.” We cheated and we called each other anyway. But that attitude was you know, one of... separation, not unison. And you weren't allowed to talk to... you know, if you're a regional director you aren't allowed to talk to a conciliation specialist from another region. That... has to be done by the regional director from that region. You know those kinds of silly bureaucratic obstacles that really deterred advancement rather than encouraged it. You know, that was again one of the reasons I wrote the sacred trust thing. Let’s all recognize that each one of us has some really good ideas. And you know one way to explain CRS is CRS is a really good idea that was passed by a bunch of people in the 1960s that allowed for the creation of an agency to make peace. What a good idea that is. Right. And the foundation of that idea is the people you come into contact with. Not an authoritarian: “we're going to make peace.” But a service of we're going to help you. In your particular, you know, deal to make peace. Might be different in Dubuque than it is in in New York. We don't know! It's the people involved. And... I always say there's no right or wrong answer. The answer is whatever you say it is. Does that make sense?

1:46:16  Bill Froehlich:      Absolutely. Tim, first of all, I have learned so much already. This has been wonderful and I know I asked you to stay on until 12 and so I and I'm sure you have, I'm not gonna ask you to stay longer for several reasons. I’ve got a 12:30 I need to prepare for as well. But I think it's likely that I'd like to do another follow-up interview sometime in the future. I want to, like I said earlier. I'm gonna stop recording now.