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Ron Wakabayashi was the Regional Director of the Western Region of the Community Relations Service from 1999 to 2020.
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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Heidi Burgess (00:00:00): >Hi, this is Heidi Burgess and I am with Beyond Intractability and working on the second phase of the Civil Rights Mediation Oral History Project with Bill Froehlich and Grande Lum. And I'm talking today with Ron Wakabayashi who is a former CRS regional director of the western region for the United States. And we talked for a couple of hours back in November, I believe. And this is the second meeting that we're having to talk further about his work at CRS. And right before I started recording, Ron started to tell me a little bit about what he's doing now and that sounded interesting to me. So let's talk about that and then we'll go back to what I was planning on talking about.
Ron Wakabayashi (00:01:05): >All right. I think that the current activity is striking to me because it feels almost cosmic because it ties together so many different things that I've sort of run into my post-retirement. But anyway, there's a situation in Torrance, California. Torrance is about, is the fourth largest city in Los Angeles County. And the LA Times ran an extensive article about the...you know, reviewing text messages among police officers that was highly discriminatory... and you know, upsetting. You know, the tone and the substance of it. Anyway, 13 of those officers, and a relatively, you know, medium size department, have now been put on leave. And the state attorney general has been asked to do an investigation of the department and then there's another investigation going on with the DA's office. And so, I reached out to Torrance. Torrance has got a situation where in the Southern part of the state it's been one of the municipalities that's had a small cluster of hate crime directed against Asian Pacific Americans. And so I, you know, there's a number of things that drew me to kind of exploring, you know, whether we might have an interest in it. And with Ohio State, with the Divided Communities Project, I'm part of another project that's called Bridges where we're doing community conflict resolution much like the work we did at CRS. So, that's been my interest in it. What the breakthrough was everyone's been on pins and needles about how to proceed on this. The breakthrough is that, you know, I've had an invitation from the attorney general's office and a breakthrough also with the police chief to become more involved in helping work through, kind of at this stage planning for how we might proceed. This attorney general's office, their civil rights director in addition to being a lawyer, has also got his master's in conflict resolution. And I've worked with him, you know, during my career at CRS. He, I think he's outstanding. But in this investigation, he really wants to explore whether we can apply restorative justice truth and reconciliation kind of principles and elements into, you know, the repair with the police department. And so that, you know, it has a number of things that have an interest for me. In the short term, what I've talked, I've begun talking to the law enforcement agency about is that the investigation, or whatever we label that report, will take an extensive period of time. In between a committee upset remains. And I think there are things that we can do that do two things. One is to signal to the community that there's a seriousness in addressing some of the issues that the department's facing, you know. And secondly, that can be a precursor to how truth and reconciliation efforts or models might be applied. And what I mean by that is like, you know, I want to explore with them like doing some things to do some cross-training through some tabletop exercises that involve both community and prosecutors and law enforcement. So, you know, that the cross-training helps bridge toward, you know, a collaborative relationship, in particular working on hate and responding to hate crimes.
Heidi Burgess (00:05:23): >Explain to me what you mean by cross-training.
Ron Wakabayashi (00:05:27): >Well, frequently when there's a hate crime that takes place, you know, people who are charged with like investigation and prosecution where the kind of the strict language of the statute is important, because they need to have as a basis of prosecution. That use of the word hate crime is different than the use of the word Hate crime by communities. Communities use the phrase hate crime to mean, you know, a bias incident that they find upsetting.
Heidi Burgess (00:06:02): >Right.
Ron Wakabayashi (00:06:03): >You know..., the legal standards, you know, like whether there's nexus or anything is not, you know, like not on their checklist, you know?
Heidi Burgess (00:06:11): >Right.
Ron Wakabayashi (00:06:11): >And so, when law enforcement looks at it and it doesn't meet the standard for prosecution and if someone you know, is not sensitive to the distinction in language and says to the community "oh, that's not a hate crime." That just upsets the community and the issue becomes a police community relation problem rather than a hate crime problem. And that starts dominating. So, you know, the tabletop exercise that we're working on is really designed to kind of, you know, supply injects like you do on a tabletop. You know, like for example, the beginning of it is that there's evidence that a grocer who's killed has had hate mail. He comes from a group that's been under public controversy, you know, in recent times. He has a small business. There's no money taken from the cash register. And that's the initial inject. So like, then we go around with the us attorney, with the DA's office, with law enforcement, with community advocates and say "well, what's your reaction at this point?" And we want to pull out those distinctions in their interests. And to help them understand those differences are not necessarily antagonistic. They're just differences in terms of what people's interests are.
Heidi Burgess (00:07:38): >And so are ... let me make sure I'm understanding here. You're doing this as an exercise not as a real intervention for a real case, is that correct or not?
Ron Wakabayashi (00:07:48): >Correct. This is a hypothetical because it's, you know, it's a tabletop.
Heidi Burgess (00:07:53): >Okay.
Ron Wakabayashi (00:07:53): >And I want to use that approach largely because it takes some of the emotion out of it. You know and you know, and people then, you know, in the process, you know, like people ... ideally people are understanding the difference in roles and responsibilities and, you know, like -. Including, you know, how they can step on each other's responses. Because the community is responding from like the concern about anxiety and so on. And they, you know, frequently, you know, like what's wanted, is a hug. Want is a reassurance. You know ... I mean, there will be talk about prosecutions and wanting someone incarcerated and all that, but it's, but you know, the underlying thing is their own concerns. Because, you know, hate crimes have a low frequency of prosecution and apprehension. But the nature of the, you know, the nature of it, what it is, is like it's a crime that occurs and an individual is involved, but the victims in the entire community. And the disconnect, I think, is that the statutory part of it addresses what one individual may have done as a crime and really does not address, you know, like the victim community.
Heidi Burgess (00:09:22): >Right.
Ron Wakabayashi (00:09:24): >You know, and because there is that structural disconnect, I think you can help repair that. But anyway, that kind of cross-training concept is really something that we start there. And one kind, you know, like I think I want try and move into truth and reconciliation kind of principles as well. You know, as we go down the line, like in further iterations of that that kind of activity. So that if the effort by the state AG to introduce truth and reconciliation restorative justice, into the process. We get both kind of, you know, members of the police department, the police union, as well as community prepared, you know, to engage at that level. They'll have a common framework and a common vocabulary.
Heidi Burgess (00:10:13): >So, are you thinking in terms of a TRC just for this event or broader than that?
Ron Wakabayashi (00:10:20): >The, you know ... I think what the AG's office is talking about is applying TRC principles. And it may not be a TRC in a formal sense of it, a call to TRC, but something like the, you know, like their community advisory board that's created. Can really operate that way. And there's some design functions, you know, when you create any kind of bodies like that, where there's design flaws, that we can, I think we can help them avoid.
Heidi Burgess (00:10:51): >Okay. So that's good. But what I was trying to figure out was whether this is going to be, I should have used different terminology, a restorative justice for this particular incident, or whether it's gonna be looking at hate crime type incidents more broadly over time and over space?
Ron Wakabayashi (00:11:13): >Yeah. I think it's talking more generally. It's more general. We're using, you know, like a tabletop in, you know, like a simulation event to give it some specifics so people can talk about it. But the idea of it is that ... well the first session is like to kind of build a foundation that people understand their, the different roles and appreciate how those can face. And if we get to a second session, that session will be focused on like, you know, how can we collaborate in different ways? You know. Even among prosecutors, you know, like the idea of vertical prosecution. Like you know, who, you know -. That's happening right now with the January 6th event. I think, you know, what statutes, you know, like are the best to be applied there. And so, if the US Attorney and the DA and city attorneys, the folks involved on that side, are coordinating and saying you know like, "who's got the best statute to pursue this particular case?" Because they do vary. Because federal nexus is just really challenging, you know, to get to a case. I mean there it's ... the federal prosecutions are rare. Where the feds are useful is they can be really useful on the investigation side. You know, let's pull in the FBI and those resources, you know, to look at it.
Heidi Burgess (00:12:34): >Strike me as they also bring a certain degree of threat so that the locals will take it seriously instead of just brush it off.
Ron Wakabayashi (00:12:41): >Yeah. And resource too. And that's part of the threat I think. So and you know, it helps kind of bridge, you know, like some of the, within some of the advocacy community, there's kind of a knee jerk police are bad.
Heidi Burgess (00:12:57): >Yeah.
Ron Wakabayashi (00:12:58): >In this current environment. Well, you know, they are and they aren't. You know, like I think that from the interest of us as mediators, you know, it's like saying like what's your interest and what's kind of like, what are the facts that you can walk away with? Like, are they all bad? If it is, I mean, that says don't talk to them. You know, if that's, if they can't be solved. If in fact, you know, like there's roles that can be useful to our community, or your community, it's to take advantage of that. You know, like there is victim assistance kind of, you know, things around that were ... like even like on like where there's this physical damage, you know, there's funding around to help repair that. And then, you know, like some cases, not this isn't Torrance, but some other cases I've been working on locally, which involved you know, like religious institutions, you know, there is direct funding to build security, to do repair, and those kinds of things. Provide training.
Heidi Burgess (00:14:16): >That comes from the federal level?
Ron Wakabayashi (00:14:18): >Mm-Hmm. And there's also private sources. You know like, the you know, like the Jewish community in particular has had a long history of this kind of exposure. And I know that at least locally in the work I've done, they've been very helpful with the Muslim community when they've been targeted to share their resources and expertise and so on. And the same thing is happening with like these more recent events. There've been a couple of Buddhist temples that have been targets.
Heidi Burgess (00:14:49): >Huh. I had two questions I was curious about as you were talking. One is thinking back to the interviews that we did, we did them in 1999, so they were over 20 years ago. I don't remember people talking about doing anything that sounded -. They certainly weren't using the term restorative justice or TRC. They might have sort of been doing it, but they weren't using those words. Do you see this as something that was going on with CRS when you were there or is this something new that's developed for you and others after CRS?
Ron Wakabayashi (00:15:32): >I think the nature of like what CRS is involved with where a community is upset, you know the, if we just use lay terms, the idea is like, you know, what can be done, you know, by communities and the people there, agencies and so on, to fix this. That's restorative justice, you know? Right. How do you fix this?
Heidi Burgess (00:15:56): >And were people not asking that back in the late nineteen hundreds, early two thousands?
Ron Wakabayashi (00:16:03): >No. I think there's a tendency in the beginning, like even now, if there, if we have a major incident, you know, like a police shooting or whatever, I think what you'll notice is that the first voices out are talking about arrest somebody, fire somebody.
Heidi Burgess (00:16:20): >Right.
Ron Wakabayashi (00:16:20): >You know, they're very positional and it's understandable, it's human, it's kind of human behavior. You know, the people who are reacting are hurt, they're angry, you know, and it's lashing out. And it really takes some processing to those people's like, okay, you know, like "I, you know, I understand the feelings to that, but you know, in the longer term, you know, what do we want for tomorrow?" And you ask that question. They want it fixed.
Heidi Burgess (00:16:47): >Right.
Ron Wakabayashi (00:16:48): >You know, they don't want it to happen again. That starts, you know, we didn't use the language of restorative justice and TRC. I agree that it wasn't there, but I think that the basic design of it is in that same direction. And that's why when the words start being used, it kind of went, you know, light bulb goes on that's what we've been doing.
Heidi Burgess (00:17:09): >Right.
Heidi Burgess (00:17:11): >I can remember one interview thinking back, and I kind of think it was Dick Salem but I'm not sure, talking about something very similar with reference to a school superintendent who was seen as acting in a discriminatory manner. And the knee jerk reaction was let's fire the guy. And I think it was Dick who was explaining "well, you know, if you fire him, you might get somebody worse. Why don't we work with him and try to figure out how to fix the situation." So it really sounds sort of the same. It's just not the words that were being used the same way.
Ron Wakabayashi (00:17:48): >Well, you know, I think for me, you know, I remember like with CRS, they put us through this activity to try to, you know, the Myers Briggs kind of stuff.
Heidi Burgess (00:17:56): >Yeah.
Ron Wakabayashi (00:17:56): >And so, I always thought that I was an idealist. I just presumed that I was. I came out on that as an absolute pragmatist. You know, and ... when I thought about it, I think it's true. Because what appeals to me is like, when you enter a situation for me it's looking at like what can we get out of this? You know, I don't, I can't always find a fix. In fact, that's fairly rare to find a permanent solution. I mean, things run pretty deep when you talk about, you know, social conflict. And communities are complex.
Heidi Burgess (00:18:34): >Right.
Ron Wakabayashi (00:18:35): >But I think we can get away with improving it. Like my own metaphor with people that I've worked with is like, you know, we might be lucky to get a chance to kick the ball toward the goal. We might get that chance. But most of the time we're just trying to work the ball down the field, you know, and it's a long game.
Heidi Burgess (00:18:57): >Right.
Ron Wakabayashi (00:18:58): >You know, and I that's the way I saw what our contribution is. Like, if you're fixated on kicking the ball to the goal and you try to make that kick every time, you know, I don't think it's productive. I mean, you know, strategically, if you, you know, if you get percentages on your side, you know, like you can kick keep the ball at their end of the field, you know, you're better off. You know, you're going to be getting better shots. So, I mean that's sort of the attitude on it. Like, and I think that's part of what I mean by the opportunist.
Heidi Burgess (00:19:29): >Okay. It sort of answers the question that is further down on my list too of how do you gauge success? And success doesn't have to be complete peace in our time. It can be improving relations so that people can work together. I would imagine.
Ron Wakabayashi (00:19:47): >Yeah. Just improving things. So even it's foundational for the next piece. Like you, like the nature of things is like, I can't find any historical period where people found like a complete solution. It just doesn't exist. I mean there's ... generally an advance, you know. There's also, you know, going, .. there's a Sisyphus phenomenon as well as you go few steps back. But I think where there's progress, the progress isn't to any kind of end state, you know. And I think that end state kind of concept is nice in some ways in an idealistic form. But if we don't maintain sort of the kind of not just vigilance, but maintenance of relationships and of situations, you know. There's just tendencies in dynamics on this planet that we're going to go into conflict. I mean, my own view is conflict is natural.
Heidi Burgess (00:20:50): >Right.
Ron Wakabayashi (00:20:51): >You know, it's you know, I think we talked about this before, you know, like my idea is like if you didn't have pain, you know like you would leave your hand on the stove and you'd lose your whole hand, you know. It's a gift to have that pain but it doesn't serve you once you take your hand away. Right. And so, you want the pain to go away. And I think that's part of like using that kind of metaphor. Okay. Let's you know like appreciate that. You know, that the conflict identifies something that needs to get addressed because it causes pain. But let's not hold onto the pain if we can avoid it, you know? So, take your hand off the stove.
Heidi Burgess (00:21:31): >Right.
Ron Wakabayashi (00:21:31): >You know, let's go on to kind of, you know, like you know, dressing the wound or whatever else, moving toward healing. That's the metaphor for me, you know? And you know, I mean depending how long you left your hand on the stove, you know, you've got a different kind of repair to become involved with. But the -. It's just more productive. And then I started understanding sort of my own pragmatism.
Heidi Burgess (00:22:01): >Interesting. Another thing I was thinking about as you were talking was wondering ... you made some comment about nowadays people are really wanting to fire somebody, or arrest somebody, or get a quick fix on an immediate situation. And I'm wondering if that's different now. And a question that I had when we were, before we started doing these interviews and we were putting together a list of questions we wanted to talk about, is I'm wondering whether the nature of police-community relations, police-community trust is worse now than it used to be or the problems that we're seeing now really there in the early days when you were working at CRS? Has the nature of the community-police relationship changed?
Ron Wakabayashi (00:23:02): >I think it has. I think. But the large part of the change I think comes from the work of communities, you know, and the availability of technology, particularly videos to be able to have more people you know like have a perspective, you know, that to have a lens on what takes place because I don't think we all have the same lens. You know, I know ... I do think there are degrees of privilege that we all have that gives us and provides different kind of lenses on what we can see as a problem. You know, I know like when I was a kid, I grew up in Boyle Heights in predominantly Latino neighborhood. And like, so I was kind of this odd kid, you know. My ... I drove my father crazy because like I'm a student body officer, honor role, and all that, but like, I'm not, I'm out every night with the guys and you know the neighborhood has a reputation and all that. So he finds that a bit disconcerting. But, and we did get picked up by the sheriff's office. And my experience there was the sheriff would drive us toward juvenile hall. And when we got, you know, across the certain, you know, bridge, you know, they would push me out of the cruiser. And they didn't really say things like "you come from a good family kid, you know. Just go home and don't hang around with these guys."
Heidi Burgess (00:24:45): >And how many times did that happen?
Ron Wakabayashi (00:24:47): >That happened for me, I mean, I recall a good half dozen times.
Heidi Burgess (00:24:50): >Wow.
Ron Wakabayashi (00:24:52): >Yeah. And I didn't, I didn't at the time.
Heidi Burgess (00:24:56): >And the Latinos got dragged in and you didn't.
Ron Wakabayashi (00:24:58): >Right.
Heidi Burgess (00:24:59): >Wow.
Ron Wakabayashi (00:25:00): >And you know.
Heidi Burgess (00:25:03): >Did anybody question that?
Ron Wakabayashi (00:25:06): >We did but it's, you know, like at that point in time it just felt like that's the way the world was.
Heidi Burgess (00:25:14): >Okay.
Ron Wakabayashi (00:25:15): >You know. I mean that same event, you know, if you give us a video camera, you know, and we've got a different situation. Right?
Heidi Burgess (00:25:24): >Right.
Ron Wakabayashi (00:25:26): >So I mean, I think the technology has changed a good deal of it. You know, both good and bad. I mean, you know, one is to bring its existence clearer so we can address it. On the other hand, you know, I think some of the other changes is that I think that the polarization has grown so much more. And I mean in different ways, I mean, I think the expectations of our stage of technological development is that we have an expectation of absolute solution. And you know, like when we when we give it like an analysis or an autopsy of every situation, you know, we do an assessment down to a micro level. And you know, I don't think any of us can sustain that level of scrutiny. You know, I make mistakes and I've got my biases and all that. But I think in the overall scheme of things, you know ... like the balances ... I think I am not problematic. That I would help like move things forward in a positive way. And I think that's true of a lot of people. But on any specific incident, if you deconstruct it, you know, I won't pass that test. None of us will.
Heidi Burgess (00:26:47): >Right.
Ron Wakabayashi (00:26:48): >You know and I don't know that that's useful to take it down to that level of scrutiny. because it takes it down to a level of scrutiny where you can't fix it. You know, and then like ... and it depends on what you mean by fixed. I mean, if a fix means a complete cure. Yeah. I think that's rare. And we're all going to be disappointed . But if our expectation is like, it's, you know, like we have a reasonable relationship, you know, where most of the time it will work. I mean, it's not always going to, but, and that's unfortunate and sometimes it can even be tragic. But it reduces the potential for the kind of polarities that preexist, you know, a controversy, you know. And that kind of preexistence kind of makes it really challenging to move things toward, you know, getting people to the table. I think I said in that earlier talk that I view success as if we can get people engaged. You know, that, you know, the resources or the situations for an answer may not all be there. But if they're engaged, you know, it takes some of the edge off it. You're talking to someone, you know, they may be flawed, but flawed is different than evil.
Heidi Burgess (00:28:17): >Right. And if they understand that the other side isn't evil it makes a lot more possible.
Ron Wakabayashi (00:28:24): >Yeah. Well, if they're evil, it's hard to forgive somebody evil.
Heidi Burgess (00:28:28): >Right.
Ron Wakabayashi (00:28:28): >Someone thought you could forgive.
Heidi Burgess (00:28:30): >Right.
Ron Wakabayashi (00:28:31): >You know, because I'm flawed, you know, I'm sorry I did that too. You know. You know like, there's there's plenty of things I do. Like, you know, my flaw list would take a couple of tablets in small print.
Heidi Burgess (00:28:45): >So, you're sort of moving into where I was expecting to start. Maybe that's by my interpretation and not really, but we made a distinction in the earlier interviews which we got from people we talked to between community or street-oriented processes and table-oriented processes. And most of what we talked about in the first discussion we had were what I would call street or community-oriented processes. And that's ... we're sort of all talking about a hybrid here. But the question I was planning to start with was, were, did you ever engage in table-oriented processes, some more standard mediations or dialogue or something like that? And if so, can you talk me through one of those cases the way we talk through the community cases?
Ron Wakabayashi (00:29:41): >Okay. The one that comes to mind for me, you know is we, I had a case situation where a Native American group used this, historically had used this, one location that adjoined, you know a national forest for their ceremonies. Right? And then, you know, like what ... they'd used it for decades. And then I, you know, what occurred was that the county was in, you know, like went to its own change and like up and you know like expanded its code enforcement activities. And so, you know, this is a fairly remote act, you know, location. It's about 10 miles of dirt road to get to it. But, and before, you know, like it was kind of left alone. Now the code enforcers, you know, because they had more of them got out there and said well, like this doesn't meet code. What do you do? And they said -. And then like of all the things that matched up in their codes is like, "well the only thing this fits under is like you're a retreat." And I said "okay, we're a retreat." Well, if you're a retreat then you have to do this, and you have to have parking, and you have to have this plumbing, and you have to have this. And you know then they tried to shut down the Indians from their retreat. So we ... Then we got into like sovereignty rights. And it didn't play all the way because you know, it was not tribal land. It was just a place where we did it. And eventually we got that to a discussion where I talked to, you know, the county code people and representatives of the different Indian groups. And we sat down and we have a mediation. And it was interesting to me in a number of ways. One, there were the cultural aspects that you know, if you do tribal stuff just very infrequently, you know, it's not the same clock. You know, if you say we're going to meet at a certain time it may not happen exactly at that time. And then at the beginning of the meetings, there's kind of a process of folks, especially tribal folks, having an interest and a need to give their story of how they arrived at this time and place. That's important to them. And from a task oriented standpoint, it can be annoying. Like why are we doing all? You know, and the county people are on the clock, right? So. Fortunately, you know like, we had a chance to talk to them about this and I had the opportunity to deal with their expectations beforehand. Say "hey, we're going to do introductions but you know, like I don't know what is going to happen for sure, but this is, this frequently, you know, kind of happens. And the the director was really very generous. He says, you know, "we want to work through this thing." So I had a very positive environment overall. These were not necessarily adversarial in a very rigid kind of way. They had differences. And then the mediation proceeded and we were -.
Heidi Burgess (00:33:20): >Let me stop you before we go into the mediation process. Was there any issue over who was going to be at the table?
Ron Wakabayashi (00:33:28): >Well we processed that beforehand.
Heidi Burgess (00:33:30): >Okay.
Ron Wakabayashi (00:33:30): >And I think that's an important element of it. So like, you know, because this was not a tribe, it was like, I think we would use the word like coalition. It's a ... people from different tribes who they ... were -. What they shared in common is, was that they were in the same clan. They were all there. And that they want to do ceremony. So on ... and so they identified their spokespeople, you know? Who they wanted to have, and -.
Heidi Burgess (00:34:04): >So each tribe had their own spokesperson?
Ron Wakabayashi (00:34:09): >No, they just sorted among them. Because they all knew each other. They did ceremony together even though they were from different tribes, you know. Just, you know, they identified their own leadership. You know, the half dozen folks that they said they would be comfortable having at the table.
Heidi Burgess (00:34:27): >And how many people from each side did you have at the table?
Ron Wakabayashi (00:34:31): >Well, we had actually six from each side. But we had other people that we called observers. So the county had like their department head, they had kind of the manager of their division, and the supervisor. And I asked them if they couldn't have some of the code enforcement people, you know, the actual line workers. And that kind of filled it out. And everyone agreed that they did not feel the need to have the mediation strictly private. Like it was open to any people who may be interested in attending and just doing it. They couldn't speak. I mean, we had ground rules and all that. But, it is a fairly open process.
Heidi Burgess (00:35:24): >Was it open to the press?
Ron Wakabayashi (00:35:26): >It was open but the press didn't sniff it out. So, that didn't become an issue. Yeah.
Heidi Burgess (00:35:35): >Okay. Go back to where you were about how you ran the process.
Ron Wakabayashi (00:35:40): >Well, we went through actually, the process went, you know, we kind of went through the stages of like, you know, what are the issues that ... and we let the county identify what, you know, what the code said, you know. And what, you know. And then the Indians had an opportunity to kind of, to stake their things like, you know. And the responses like were like, they're mixed, that we can do that. You know, it just that would be very expensive. That'd be difficult to do. That's ... there's a long road that's all dirt for us to pave all of that and have parking. And ceremonies only happen, you know like, they don't happen every day, you know? And the sweat lodge is like, the fire concerns, you know. Some of that we know we can deal with, work with, you know. So it's going back and forth. But then it looked like it was really overall heading toward a stalemate just because there was too, there was, there was like so much minutia, you know, in the code and things that that had to be addressed. Because there was a whole long list of things that the code enforcement folks said like were not in compliance. And it was just an interesting breakthrough to sit there and like -. So I said "can I ask one question of like the, you know, the line folks, the code enforcement folks, you know." I says like "you've listened to this conversation for a while. So, you guys are probably the most familiar with this code stuff and its application. If you were the Indians, what would you do? You know? Would, can you, you know, give us some idea of that?" And one guy said "oh, I'd haul a trailer up there, make it a residence and then it's no longer a retreat. And then, you know, we don't have kind, didn't have an interest in it then." And then I turned to the department head. I said "does that resonate with you? I mean, is that, you know?" He goes "yeah, that's true." And I looked at Eagle Hawk, I said "hey, Turtle Hawk." I said like "what do you think? Because I can get a trailer."
Heidi Burgess (00:38:04): >So this isn't establishing a residence on forest service land? Isn't that going to run into other hiccups?
Ron Wakabayashi (00:38:08): >No, it was adjoining force land as a -.
Heidi Burgess (00:38:14): >Okay.
Ron Wakabayashi (00:38:14): >It's private property. But. And then what we ... were satisfied with that. Both sides. I said "do we have an agreement?" And you know, there's a nodding. It's like well now that we have an agreement on it, let me explore this. Like in order to get this done the county still has an interest in just kind of public safety. That's why the codes are there. Can the county, you know, be available to the tribe to help them look at those kind of issues? Because the tribe has said, as we've talked about, they have a shared interest in wanting to have safety for the people who come and do ceremony. And so if there are things that like ... I mean the code, you know, it isn't there necessarily to punish people. The code is there to protect people, you know? And so if we get not to the position of that but to the interest, but that, you know ... would the county be available to the tribe to help do that? You know? Because the tribe says even if we do the residential they still need to pull some permits.
Heidi Burgess (00:39:20): >Right.
Ron Wakabayashi (00:39:21): >You know, so, you know. Is there an agreement to kind of work together to do that? And in the long run, I mean it took a while and the implementation took even longer because they raised money, you know, even to get the trailer. And they had to rebuild the kitchen. You know, because they had a common kitchen on there and that there's some compliance issues that they needed to deal with even with the residential.
Heidi Burgess (00:39:48): >I see. But they were more manageable I gather.
Ron Wakabayashi (00:39:53): >Yeah. Because you know, like if you make it the commercial kitchen rather than the residential kitchen, I mean the standards are, you know. Then you get the health departments involved, and food safety training, and you know. It, you know ... there can be a lot that they throw at you.
Heidi Burgess (00:40:14): >Well, that's really interesting and creative. How would you say the relation? Do you know anything now or at some point past did the relations between the parties stay on a positive level?
Ron Wakabayashi (00:40:29): >It has. Like in fact, you know, like the ... I mentioned one, Turtle Hawk, was kind of the key individual on the American Indian side. When he passed away, you know, I went to his passing ceremony up at that site. But you know, a lot of the county people were there. You know, and you could see that like when they came they embraced.
Heidi Burgess (00:40:55): >Wow. And how long after the mediation was this?
Ron Wakabayashi (00:40:59): >That was about five years afterwards.
Heidi Burgess (00:41:04): >Wow.
Ron Wakabayashi (00:41:06): >Yeah. That was in some ways an easier one because like, you know, there were probably a few individuals that were really wanted to enforce the code, you know, letter of, you know. That was more of a personality thing. I think most of the folks were, you know, had an interest. Like I wish it didn't happen and this wasn't on our plate, you know? Because ... but there were other learnings that came out of that process. Because like, you know the, you know, like the time spent with them when the ... I met with a lot of the young people, you know. And I asked them what this place meant for them. And they says like, you know says like "if you're an Indian, you know, and people know that when you're in school. You know, they make these hooping sounds and dance around you and it makes you cry, you know?" And you know. And you know like it's one of those kind things where youy can see it, you know. I mean, you have seen. I've seen it.
Heidi Burgess (00:42:23): >My thinking is wow that wouldn't fly in these days but maybe I'm wrong about that. How long ago was this?
Ron Wakabayashi (00:42:30): >No. I ... It still goes on. It ...
Heidi Burgess (00:42:32): >Wow.
Ron Wakabayashi (00:42:33): >You know..., it just doesn't reach me. I mean, look at the activity that's going on like about like mascots with high schools and stuff.
Heidi Burgess (00:42:43): >Yeah.
Ron Wakabayashi (00:42:44): >That's a slow change on like what should be like, you know, if it's wrong to disparage, you know, an ethnic group, that's not, you know..., it's been, there's been a lot of resistance to it. I mean there's places where the change has been real, real fast. But there's places where there's real resistance. You know, where people don't understand what's the big deal, you know? And you ... I know ... like it comes, it ties into your own personal experience. Like, you know ... I was director of the Japanese American Citizens League. And so one of the things that was kind of always on my plate was like if some public official said "Jap," you know, my job was go out there and shake my finger at them. Right? And so it was like something I did. I remember talking to Senator Orrin Hatch. Because like he's a good guy man. I had breakfast with him every weekend. You know, like ... he ... doesn't understand but he's, you know, he's ... It's not the kind of animus. You know and I talked to him and all that and we worked it out. But they were among like sort of my constituency that they would send letters like "oh no, we should go after other kind of things like." And they brought up literally cheese nips and coffee nips. And I said "no, I'm not doing that."
Heidi Burgess (00:44:18): >Why? Is nip a derogatory term for Japanese?
Ron Wakabayashi (00:44:23): >Japanese -. Japan -. Another word for Japan is Nippon.
Heidi Burgess (00:44:27): >Oh, right. Okay.
Ron Wakabayashi (00:44:30): >It was like you know, those dirty nips.
Heidi Burgess (00:44:32): >Okay. Never put that together.
Ron Wakabayashi (00:44:34): >For me though you know like, I didn't grow up hearing much of like sort of the, you know, being called Jap, you know, as I grew up. That wasn't part of the experience. But what I did go through, because remember I said I grew up in the Latino neighborhood?
Heidi Burgess (00:44:51): >Yeah.
Ron Wakabayashi (00:44:52): >There's a chant that's in Spanish. Chino, Chino, Japonés come caca y no me des. You know, it's actually pretty gross. It's like Chino, Chino, you know ... it's Chinese, Chinese, Japanese, Japanese. Just where it sounds. Come caca. Yeah. Eat crap. No me des, drink urine. You know? That would push my buttons more because I grew up with that.
Heidi Burgess (00:45:23): >Yeah.
Ron Wakabayashi (00:45:24): >You know, I'm saying like "okay, if you do that, you know, you're going to have rocks coming at you. You know it's -. Yeah it's just kind of an emotional button.
Heidi Burgess (00:45:34): >Did the kids that hung out with ... I'm thinking about the kids that you got caught with in the, by the sheriff, the kids who you were hanging out with. Did they defend you?
Ron Wakabayashi (00:45:44): >Oh yeah. Yeah. I mean we used to trade lunches. I used to get their burritos and they get my rice balls. <Laugh> But, you know, it's ... there's still stuff in there. I mean like, you know like in my high school there were only 11 Japanese Americans in the school. So we were still a minority. And there's a continuum of folks who are your classmates, you know. So you know, it's a range of experience. But I understood like if you looked in before 9/11, the day of infamy in the United States was Pearl Harbor.
Heidi Burgess (00:46:20): >Right.
Ron Wakabayashi (00:46:21): >So if you go back and look on Pearl Harbor date on December 7th was the greatest, had the greatest number of truancy among Japanese Americans. Because that's the day where you either get, you know ... like they had what they call slap the Jap day. You go through that. And frequently, you know, like ... there's other stuff. Like you know, like you knew certain teachers that were intolerant that would stand you up in front of the class and say "now you need to apologize."
Heidi Burgess (00:46:52): >Wow.
Ron Wakabayashi (00:46:54): >You know ... and you heard kind of parallel stories. Like during the Vietnam war. Like guys who were in the service of Vietnam. If you were Asian, they pulled you to the front and said this is what the enemy looks like.
Heidi Burgess (00:47:04): >Wow.
Ron Wakabayashi (00:47:05): >You know so yeah. You grow up with that. So when the Indian kids talking about like the people go, you know, like cupping, you know, their hands over their mouth and hooping, you know. I can understand kind of the visceral reaction to that. And so it really kind of evolved into doing some other case work with schools.
Heidi Burgess (00:47:31): >And how'd you go about doing that?
Ron Wakabayashi (00:47:34): >Well you know the kids identified the schools that they were at. And they said "okay, let's go talk. Let's go talk to them."
Heidi Burgess (00:47:41): >So did you do assemblies there, or small group stuff, or?
Ron Wakabayashi (00:47:45): >Well, we ... you know like CRS does a program that they call SPIRIT and it's really just kind of a processing format to organize an ongoing, you know, focus on addressing, you know, like problems in that environment. So the SPIRIT, the design is like there's a two-day process or a two-stage process where at first, you know, the kids are divided along identity groups. So it'd be black, Asian, you know, so on. And then those groups you try to extract, you know what's, you know like a ... you facilitate a conversation on what are the issues that this group sees. And then we take those, all of those, and we put them onto like one major list. The second day, you know, the groups are mixed. And saying okay like ... and they're given that list, the entire list of the things that came out from the different groups on the first day, and saying "you like of these things which are the ones that you think are the most pressing, the most problematic you know. And just the beginning of developing a plan. And the day -. And use, you know ... the design is that it intends to end with kids who are the most interested and volunteer to serve on a SPIRIT council to go on ongoing work with the school administration to address those things. Now frequently they're not even identity bases. Like it's student parking or it's food in the cafeteria. But it begins a process where the school is engaged with the students. But it's, you know, it's a platform for that discussion about like how the, in the case that we're talking about, how the Indian kids are feeling, you know. And you know that's in there. But a number of other things get addressed. In some ways, you know, when I talked about the tabletop with the police and that's really sort of the idea of it. That like we get a kind of a citizen's advisory group. Out of that they become like kind of a SPIRIT council. They, you know, their literacy is elevated about what truths and reconciliation kind of things might be about. They, you know -. They would have kind of the benefit and exposure ideally of having officers speak to them about, you know, like what they go through. As well as, you know, community groups, you know, what they go through. So you're getting a lot of the truth and reconciliation model applied in it. But as they understand the process more, you know, they can apply it. That's sort of the concept of it.
Heidi Burgess (00:50:38): >Makes sense. Let me go back for a minute to the table-oriented process that you were talking about. Were there any trust issues, either the Indians not trusting the other side, or not trusting you, or the officials, the county officials? Not trusting the Indians for that they were going to bargain in good faith? Or not trusting you to run an even-handed process?
Ron Wakabayashi (00:51:11): >I think there's always that, you know. The, you know ... there clearly was one code enforcement officer that was you know like evil incarnate to the Indians. She was the one that made the reports. And she felt very defensive and all that. You know I talked to her before the sessions and I asked her how she was feeling about that. Because I'm just ... and she shared that she felt that discomfort. And I said you know like these processes like really don't work well if people are mistreated or feel intimidated. You know like, you know, like you either are not going to show up or you're not going speak or. You know, it's not productive. So you know, that's something like that I would want to address. And we've talked, you know, just in small groups with the tribal folks and I think they under, you know, and I shared what their understanding was their understanding was that she's a new employee that she's given the code book and she's, you know, and if you read the code book, you know that's how it would read. You don't have a parking lot. You don't have, you know ... so many bathrooms per number of people, you know, you don't they can figure that out. But, but you're the one who made the report. Right.
Heidi Burgess (00:52:41): >Right. And she probably doesn't know how flexible she can or can't be.
Ron Wakabayashi (00:52:45): >Yeah. And she can't do the work around. Yeah. You know, and if she'd been like probably more experienced, she would have some like, oh, they do workarounds on these things. You know? And so, you know, I shared with her that, that we have that conversation internally, you know with, among the Indian folks and that initially there was upset with her, you know, but I told like that had dissipated, you know, but I really see that as part of the process, when you, when you bring people in, if you have someone that, that feels they, that they're going to be you know, targeted that, that doesn't help the process. And if they are gonna be targeted, it's, I mean, they have a choice not to be there. You know? I mean, that's, I don't wanna subject someone to it.
Ron Wakabayashi (00:53:39): >Like it it's. So, you know, there are times where they're where the community is so angry, you know, that's gonna be distraction to have someone that they feel angry about you know, other mediation, this predates CRS, but, you know, like during the, the civil unrest in 92, you know, we had, we brought together Korean and African American folks. And the, you know, the two communities are structurally very different. The Koreans are immigrant, you know, the power really resides in the first generation who are not English fluent, or even English speaking, but they hold the power within the African.
Heidi Burgess (00:54:26): >So we're talking about in LA now after the Rodney King situation.
Ron Wakabayashi (00:54:31): >Yeah. Yeah. So we have them sitting down. Okay. And the African American folks, you know, like are much more seasoned and organizing, they have organizations that are dedicated to do this kind of ... engagement, you know, and advocacy, the Korean folks really don't, you know, that's, that's not like typically within immigrant communities, you have the first generation developing, you know, having communities that they organizations that they bring from the country of origin. You know, if you look at Mexican communities, you know, the first generation they have, they have, state-based organizations like [inaudible] groups, and they buy fire engines for their local hometown stuff like that. A Japanese organized around prefectural associations, Chinese around, you know, family name, you know, in case on the, you know, [inaudible] associations, but they bring institutions from old country, you know, that's, that makes sense.
Ron Wakabayashi (00:55:35): >And then, you know, after they're here a while the organizations that develop kind of serve their more immediate needs in the Japanese community, community people there was a concentration of people become gardeners. You know, Japanese gardeners was a common stereotype, but, you know, if you have a rake and a hose you're in business, you know, it's ... kind of fits. And if you look just generally within communities, like nail salons of Vietnamese, you know, donut stores are, you know, Cambodian you know, Koreans have convenience stores and dry cleaners. I mean, there's concentrations for various reasons, but you'd start developing institutions along those lines. Like, so Korean American growth, you know, because they buy things in lot. They even have group insurance, you know, a lot of things that, so they have those kind of institutions that serve their survival.
Ron Wakabayashi (00:56:39): >And it's not really until you get to the third generation to where you have upwardly facing organizations like advocacy and civil rights and civic. So, the Koreans are short on those and what's at the table are what, what is called 1.2, 1.5 generation folks, the kids that are raised here. So they're ... bilingual, you know, but and they're much more culturally adept and can interact with other communities. You know, and both, both linguistically and culturally kind of, you know, can fit. So, they can, they're fine at the, in the conversations, but they have no authority. They've gotta take it back to the first generation. So the process is uneven that way, you know, and like quite frankly, I mean, I saw some things where there were some African American folks that took advantage of their lack of mobility, you know, of agility and like there's different ways you balance off.
Ron Wakabayashi (00:57:37): >Like, so like in Los Angeles, the pastor, the first AME church, Cecil Murray, Cecil was just a revered person. I mean, if you met him, he, you know, like if you've met any of the civil rights, people like C.T. Vivian, they just have a presence, you know, it's like you were in the presence of a Saint, well, you know Chip Murray had that kind of presence in respect. So I asked Chip, would, would you just be an observer in these meetings? You know? And so Chip came in, but the difference was like the people who were kind of being opportunists in the meetings became, became states people in front of Chip Murray, it changed the dynamics, you know? So, I mean, I learned things like that.
Heidi Burgess (00:58:24): >What was, what was the goal of the meetings?
Ron Wakabayashi (00:58:27): >The goal was to see like how, you know, like there was a presumption because the media said there was a Black Korean conflict, there's a presumption of conflict and saying like, how do we fix this conflict? You know? And, you know, I don't know that there was a deep structural conflict, I mean, or cultural one, you know like, so it depends on your assessment of it, but the there were 700 Korean owned stores in south central Los Angeles during that time period overwhelmingly this Korean community that migrated during that time were small business and there were all over the place. It's really a small number that was in south central. South central at that time, you know, had, you know, had gone to a demographic shift where the African American community that was 90%, you know, black at one point middle and upper income were able to kind of move out.
Ron Wakabayashi (00:59:25): >They're moving out into, you know, antelope valley and inland empire. And what you're what's left behind is much more concentrated, impoverished community, higher crime. You know, I mean, those are structural things in my mind? And so that's what this small group of Korean merchants were encountering. And the group of Korean merchants that are ending up there are the less successful where the newest arrived. The folks are more successful, have built business, you know, they've moved into suburbs with their stores. So this is structural situation that sits there and, you know the, and there's cultural things get to get added into it. There's gonna be a point of conflict and it takes place like, so there were some incidents like the shooting of Latasha Harlins. Latasha was a 12 year. I think I might have talked about she's 12 years old. She was, she was shot in a Korean owned store.
Heidi Burgess (01:00:25): >I think. Yeah, you did.
Ron Wakabayashi (01:00:27): >And, you know, and you could see the structural nature of that, like, or that the, you know, if you looked, you know, the coverage of the dynamics between the black newspaper in Sentinel and the Korea times, you know, you were reading about the same situation or same planet even. And that's why I think so much of this was structural, you know? And so in the conversations . . . like we can help them identify that some of the structural it's misunderstandings, you know like putting money on the counter. It's not disrespectful. It's intended to be respectful, you know?
Heidi Burgess (01:01:05): >So one of the goals, it sounds like was just getting the two groups to understand each other and to understand the cultural differences. So there wasn't as much distrust.
Ron Wakabayashi (01:01:17): >Yeah. That's the, that's the idealistic part, you know, there's other, like if we get, get down into the community there's extortion going on, you got guys running into the Korean store, saying "look, man, you'll be okay. You just pay the tax." I mean . . . .
Heidi Burgess (01:01:37): >Were you able to stop that?
Ron Wakabayashi (01:01:40): >To some extent . . . I knew some of the people who are doing the things right. And so, you know, we were able to do that, but that's a different level of that. That's not so much conflict resolution, that's something else. But you know, those dynamics are gonna be there. I mean, I think when you're looking at conflict there's you know, like what we attribute to race conflict often doesn't have that kind of underpinning interest, you know, like it's often economic it's often romantic, you know, like some of the high, we had a period where like in LA, in the high schools, there was a high school blowing up every week. Wow. I mean, where law enforcement had to come in, you know? And there were, these protocols arranged for what you do when the school, I mean, the whole school is in unrest.
Heidi Burgess (01:02:47): >So you, weren't talking about an actual bomb. You were talking about the civil unrest.
Ron Wakabayashi (01:02:52): >Yeah. But, the unrest in the school, like, it's kind like there'd be actually . . . the beginning was, is like over like a girl. Right. And like, I met this one school, I just remember in particular the two males got into mutual combat, and then that turned into a food fight, you know because it's during lunch period . . . and it wasn't a small group then that the food gets done and then hits this one kid. That's got this brand new outfit and he just starts cursing. And he is using racial expletives because he is, got this food thrown on him, the people further out just hear the racial expletive and they hear race. And then it's just on you know, it's contagious. And so the school goes into lockdown, the demographics of the school where that actually the Latinos outnumbered Blacks in the school.
Ron Wakabayashi (01:04:06): >So the Blacks felt threatened. And like the lockdown protocols, like you go to your homeroom or your next period of class, the smaller number of black kids going, we ain't doing that because I'm gonna be one of four black kids in with 30 other Latino kids. I'm not going there. They would seek out the black teacher, like, you know, who's, you know, in the bungalows, across campus, the cops come in, you know, to settle it down, who they see walking, you know, like outside the black kids. So the, this campus would be 80% Latino, 20% black, but who gets picked by the cops.
Heidi Burgess (01:04:45): >Yeah.
Ron Wakabayashi (01:04:46): >You know, so there's a lot of dynamics that are playing out that I think, you know, part of our role is to be able to go in there and create . . . what I've just kind of shared with you, this is how this...
Heidi Burgess (01:05:03): >The spirit, the sessions.
Ron Wakabayashi (01:05:06): >Yeah, yeah. This is, and this is how it took place, you know, and this is how it ended up at like such a disproportionate number of black kids got picked up by the cops.
Heidi Burgess (01:05:16): >So if you had one of these things happening a week, were you able to handle them all? Or did you have to triage it?
Ron Wakabayashi (01:05:24): >I mean, it's always triage, but you know, like when you're having a whole bunch of them, and then, you know, you can work with the institutions with the school district and say, hey, look, this is going on. And there's things that we can see, you know, like on your lockdown protocols, you know, I mean, those are good at one level, but they've gotta be refined further, you know, when the kids that are gonna go across campus. And if you kind of know that, you know, just set up for it. So they don't, you know there's other things that go on . . . like the way this stuff, because like in this one particular campus, what I'm thinking of this, you know, the population of the school, you know, because of like all the demographic changes, the school was the high school was built for about 3,000 students. The number of high school age students in, in that jurisdiction, you know, was now around 8,000.
Ron Wakabayashi (01:06:22): >Okay. So there were busing kids to other schools. So the fascinating part of it is like, so you would have an incident happen on this campus in the inner city, you know, a half an hour later that the campus, that the kids are bussed to, that's going down, that's going off.
Heidi Burgess (01:06:38): >Wow.
Ron Wakabayashi (01:06:39): >Because the cell phones
Heidi Burgess (01:06:40): >Yeah.
Ron Wakabayashi (01:06:41): >You know, are reaching there and saying, well, you need to deal with that. And then the difference is like, in those suburban schools where the kids are at the behavior is different. Like mothers in . . . those, in those areas, we're climbing down the fence, climbing over the fence to get to their kids because they were so worried, you know, their perception of inner-city kids coming in. And that suburban kids were at risk was really a driver. You know . . . literally people who we would never expect to climb a chain link fence,
Heidi Burgess (01:07:21): >I was thinking mothers are gonna do any good here. <Laugh>
Ron Wakabayashi (01:07:25): >Yeah. Yeah. But it kind of just shows you the degree of fear that they had about their kids because it, in any other normal circumstances, you could not get those ladies climb a fence.
Heidi Burgess (01:07:36): >Yeah.
Ron Wakabayashi (01:07:38): >You know, so you have protocols, like how to work out with the schools, like how do you call out parents? Like how do you have them reunite with the kids? You know, there's a lot of planning that you didn't have to do before, so you help facilitate that. And ...
Heidi Burgess (01:07:54): >I'm wondering, I mean, again, I'm thinking now back then I had a long discussion with, Silke Hansen about Boston when Boston was first desegregated. I don't know if there were moms climbing fences, but there were sure moms putting up a huge fuss.
Ron Wakabayashi (01:08:11): >Oh, that was us I mean, I wasn't there, but I've, I've certainly seen the footage on it.
Heidi Burgess (01:08:18): >Yeah. So, it seems like the problems, that kind of problem's been around for a long time. Sure. But that, again, when you were talking about the cell phones, I was going back. I can remember food fights in my high school cafeteria. I don't remember them ever escalating into racial situations, but it's probably because I went to a 99.5% white high school. So, I mean you were the poor one or two minorities couldn't possibly because I mean they just hid in the corner, but they were so minimal that it never amounted to anything, but we, there weren't cell phones just spread ideas around. So that's another way that technology is making things all the more difficult
Ron Wakabayashi (01:09:12): >It is. Cause you know, like the 92 civil unrest, you know, the contagion was the news media, you know, that's how people found out it's through the news media. Right. But, but now it's cell phone. I said that the
Heidi Burgess (01:09:29): >That's so much faster.
Ron Wakabayashi (01:09:30): >Mm-Hmm <affirmative> and so, and that's when I'd like, mean in terms of like you know, doing assessment. I was just talking to an it guy who, who was just contracted during the, the December holidays for different reasons. But he was contracted by the Department of Justice to be able to, you know, identify the location of, on any of the assigned cell phones for any DOJ staff member. And their initial interest was like, you know, like the fire in Colorado
Heidi Burgess (01:10:11): >Yeah. I'm very aware it was started a half mile from my house.
Ron Wakabayashi (01:10:14): >Yeah. Well they wanted to find a way to get a hold and check on their DOJ people. Yeah. That's where it's . . . . But the other part of this was like, you know, that technology, when I talked to them like because I know like when we have like a police shooting or maybe a critical incident, you know, like my folks, you know, who I work with, we would be on social media, in a hurry and on different social media to see, you know, what the chatter is in different places. So we would look at, you know, like Parler and there's a thing called WeChat. Right. You know, you know and there's another one called We
Heidi Burgess (01:10:53): >So you're monitoring all of those.
Ron Wakabayashi (01:10:55): >Yeah. So the Chinese used We. Parler is used by a different population. You you're looking at all of 'em and getting a, a quick snapshot on like what, what kind of, you know, what kind of agitation, what kind of numbers are playing out? And you can even get some idea of geography. Like the guy I was talking about was like, they really have the technology to hone this down to, you know a very narrow area, you know, if something's going on. So, you know but they would never release that information to the government. There's too many privacy protections and all that.
Heidi Burgess (01:11:32): >The cops have additional abilities that are like that too though.
Ron Wakabayashi (01:11:36): >Yeah, they do. And that's kinda, but you know, the cops truly don't use it. The cops tend to use like on a critical incident, they tend to view a crowd as a crowd, as a crowd. Okay. Rather than to deconstruct, like these are the different elements, you know, of this crowd and, you know, and to be more surgical about how you do crowd management.
Heidi Burgess (01:11:58): >So, this again brings me back to a comparison between now and then. We talked in our earlier interviews about rumor control and rumor control teams. It strikes me that as difficult as it was back then to control rumors, it's gotta be an order of magnitude, more difficult, perhaps even impossible. Now with social media. Is there anything to do if, if you've got a false rumor going around, say about police violence, that wasn't nearly as bad as, as it's being made out to be. Is there any way to turn that around?
Ron Wakabayashi (01:12:39): >No, I think there are things that you can do with that very much so. But it takes an enlightenment on top of, of like managers, like the current CRS couldn't do this . . . the current management, I mean, you know, the current management of CRS does not have field experience. And so there's stuff that, you know, unless you have the experience, there's stuff you can't see yet because you haven't been on the ground. There's not the lens to do it.
Heidi Burgess (01:13:07): >So when you say the current management, are you talking about the main director in Washington or are you talking about regional directors too?
Ron Wakabayashi (01:13:16): >Yeah. Gerri Ratliff is a very nice woman and she's worked very hard, you know, to do things, but she doesn't have field experience.
Heidi Burgess (01:13:22): >Yeah.
Ron Wakabayashi (01:13:24): >And, and she knows it as well, but it's kind of like, you know, you can't, you don't know what you don't know.
Heidi Burgess (01:13:30): >Right.
Ron Wakabayashi (01:13:32): >But, you know, and it's but, and it's also difficult because you know, she's there and she doesn't know who she can trust. So she's kind of closed in, I mean, there's a lot of different dynamics, but I don't wanna get into current CRS so much, but just, just generally that you know, that the technology or the ability to do to read this, you know, takes some enlightenment, like my folks in region nine in order, like to get into Parler, you know, or Reddit, or, 4Chan, you know, those, the ones that are, are used by folks that are more aggressive, you know, you can't just kinda log into that, like Facebook and read it
Ron Wakabayashi (01:14:24): >You know, you've gotta have a relationship developed and make entry beforehand. And I know that there, there are folks in CRS, ones that understand this stuff, you know, they prepositioned And among ourselves, we know who can, and who does read and it makes a difference. You know, we can, there's, there's a few people in CRS who couldn't reach the groups that are normally not reachable. Like if we talk about anarchists or outright folks, generally those are anti-government, they're not talking to us. There's some of our folks that, that a few of our folks that can make it. The other thing though, is like, you can set up other kinds of apparatus. Like one of the things that we pioneered was the idea of creating a community command center.
Ron Wakabayashi (01:15:15): >Okay. You know, and so like that started out the first time was because I had another tribal case and the ... sheriff had killed several Indian law enforcement people on, on contesting who had jurisdiction. And it got so heated, you know, like there were people killed. And so, there's this real animosity between the . . . sheriff and the tribe so much. So that, like, even for other things, like if there was a fire and this was in a more rural area, you know, and we said, you know, if there was a command post, the sheriff was not gonna let the Indians in their command posts. And I'm like, what's kind cutting off your nose to spite you face the Indians kind of know the terrain better. You know . . . a lot of the firefighters come from their ranks, you know you know, we should work on fixing this somehow. Right. And informally there's an agreement, but they didn't know one wanted to budge. What we did set up is . . . these are essentially like outdoor command posts. So they're like large tents ...
Heidi Burgess (01:16:21): >Right.
Ron Wakabayashi (01:16:22): >We put 'em side by side <laugh>. I said "all right, you know, this side of the table is you can't come in here. This, this is the Indian command post." So that it started that way. Other events, I would create a community command post where CRS would control the command post. Cause we're, we don't have to get fussy about having only sworn people in there. We would tell the cops come, gang members come ministers come, you know, and if something breaks out, you had a place where the rumors could come in and folks could work on it.
Heidi Burgess (01:17:00): >And then you had people who were tech savvy, who could get accurate information back on all of those networks.
Ron Wakabayashi (01:17:08): >Sometimes, sometimes we can do that. But, but, but if there was a rumor break, if something was breaking, you know, if we had it like in the community command post . . . you have folks . . . can you check that with your people? You know, can you check that with the Crenshaw Mafia, if that's what's going on, you know, if that's, you know, with their understanding or not.
Heidi Burgess (01:17:29): >So then you find out it's not what's going on, then what,
Ron Wakabayashi (01:17:32): >Well, we're all in the same room. They can go back to, you know, the cops are there. They can go back through their system and the minister can go through theirs. I mean, like, there's these other networks, but that's an alternative creation.
Heidi Burgess (01:17:45): >Right. Okay. Let me look at my list here a little bit and see what we've covered and what we haven't. Can you talk a little bit about power disparity, disparities? I'm thinking particular in terms of ...
Ron Wakabayashi (01:18:15): >That's hard, that's hard
Heidi Burgess (01:18:16): >Yeah. That's hard. What do you do about it?
Ron Wakabayashi (01:18:22): >For me? You know, like I've taken very seriously, you know, that we're third-party neutrals. Okay. But the concept of neutrality deserves . . . a lot more discussion or impartiality, you know, when there's a huge power imbalance on one hand, will I agree that I should not be an advocate because I won't be effective to mediate a thing. If I'm an advocate, you know, I gotta go do that. So the impartiality is important, but I think there are opportunities to address the power imbalance. You know, when I gave the example of pulling Chip Murray into a meeting, you know I didn't add power to one side or the other, but you know, like sometimes there's a presence of, you know, it's kind of like if you brought my mother into the room, I would behave differently.
Ron Wakabayashi (01:19:32): >You know, it's in a sense recognizing, you know, like how can we get people on their best behavior, you know, and, get the better angels and them to kinda show up. The other thing is I think you can be impartial but ask them questions about their own comfort levels. You know, this is a mediation, ideally in a mediation . . . it ought be between equal parties and, but equal doesn't exist in the world. I mean, there's always some inequity, you know, some are smarter talks, faster talks, louder is bigger there's a lot you can't get two absolutely equal things. So, you know when we talk about setting up like a mediation, we're gonna sit down and talk, think about what is gonna make you the most comfortable for this, you know, and they could say no to it, you know, but you can propose whatever.
Ron Wakabayashi (01:20:35): >And like, it's like if, you are representing an interest for your community of interest, you know it seems to me, you have a responsibility to do the best job you can. And if there's something that's offsetting, you know, or off-putting to you and to see if there are ways that it works better for you, you know, you know, I'm not telling you what to do. It's just saying that if there are those things just to give it the thought, I think you can address the issue of power by putting it back in their hands.
Heidi Burgess (01:21:12): >Okay.
Ron Wakabayashi (01:21:13): >You know, I mean, do you feel okay with this?
Heidi Burgess (01:21:16): >Was this
Ron Wakabayashi (01:21:17): >Yeah.
Heidi Burgess (01:21:17): >Was this more likely a discussion that you'd have with the low power side or the high-power side?
Ron Wakabayashi (01:21:25): >With the lower power side more frequently, but, you know, even with the side that has more power, you know, I mean, it's frequently a conversation like this, like, hey look, you know, like you've got more juice than these folks. So I think you can blow this off for a while, but you know, when this's gonna come back, it's kind of like when it comes back, there'd be something else that comes back with it, you know? And it's just going to not stop and know, it may not be on your watch maybe, but it's still gonna come back. You might wanna think about like if you're gonna kick it down the road to kick it further down the road you know, and even like the reality is like, you know, we can get to like a resolution, you could even force it.
Ron Wakabayashi (01:22:14): >You know? I mean, because there's stuff that you guys . . . I've seen like people do on the side where they there's threats, you know? Or I said like, you know, that stuff can go on. You know, like there's not much I can do about it, but you know what? It doesn't hold, you know? I mean the different, I mean like, I mean you shouldn't even go into this if, if we're gonna be like that, this is not all that enforceable anyway, what makes it enforceable is like, if people, you know, like sit there and say, this is what I'm willing to do, you know? And we get that like honestly, you know, that's our best shot, you know, because if we're not gonna have that, you know, we're gonna trick 'em or force them, you know, they're just gonna be mad <laugh> and come back, you know? And then when they come back, they're . . . not gonna come to the table, man. It's just gonna be dirty. You know? I mean, you could, you can pick where, where you wanna do that. But you know, like I think, you know, like especially the, usually the people with whole power are people who, who belong to agencies and institutions. Right. But certainly people with, from agencies and institutions have more restrictions. Like there are things that they catch you doing it, you know, you're gonna get beat up.
Heidi Burgess (01:23:29): >Right.
Ron Wakabayashi (01:23:31): >You know, just that like, you know, like it's just trying to get like if this is real, we got a better chance, you know? And if you don't wanna do it . . . you can't be forced to go to the table on this.
Heidi Burgess (01:23:44): >Did you ever have a hard time getting people to come to the table?
Ron Wakabayashi (01:23:48): >Oh yeah. I've walked into one where this was at the Bureau of Indian Affairs asked me, "Would I come and do this mediation?" And I knew the superintendent and . . . I said, oh, sure. I'll help out. I went there. I walked in the two sides, came in and they both came to the table, sat down and turned their backs on each other. <Laugh>
Ron Wakabayashi (01:24:14): >I went, what is this? You know? So, you really had to go back to the ground rules at the beginning. People really wanna be here. You know, it's one of those where, you know, I didn't set it up. Right. You get called in and said, would you take this one? I mean, I had one where another Indian case where the US Attorneys would, I would, would I go there to be a resource person, you know? And I said, okay, I can do that. I can, you know, leave, you know, half a day early and go to the reservation. And as I was driving in, I get the call from the US Attorney. So like, Hey, do you need cover going in? I said, what do you mean, do I need cover? He says, now there there's been a real upshot in gun sales and ammo sales and stuff like that.
Ron Wakabayashi (01:25:11): >I said, you didn't say that to me on the first call <laugh>. I said, no, I think I'm okay. I've been here before. And, but then when we got into the meeting, you know, like I set myself on the perimeter on the, outside by the wall because I, you know, I was there under the understanding that I'm gonna be a resource person. And so, the superintendent was there and the sheriff was there and the tribal chair was there and they went to the whole first part of the meeting to that set the stage. And after the stage was set, superintendent introduces me and says, Ron's here from DOJ and I'm gonna turn it over to him now <laugh> [inaudible]. What!
Heidi Burgess (01:25:56): ><Laugh> let me go back for a minute, to the two sides who were sitting back-to-back, what did you do?
Ron Wakabayashi (01:26:07): >Well, I just pointed it out. It's like, look you can't help, but know, you guys have your backs to each other, do you not wanna be here? You know, I said like, because like . . . you don't have to be here. You know? I mean, this is only gonna work ...
Heidi Burgess (01:26:22): >At that point. Did they turn around or did they walk out?
Ron Wakabayashi (01:26:25): >No, they directed to me because you know, the mediation technique was so directed to me. Right,
Heidi Burgess (01:26:30): >Right. But that's even hard if they're, if you're at what end of the table and they're the other sides with their backs to you, they can't even talk to you.
Ron Wakabayashi (01:26:41): >Well, they, when, when I opened it up, they, they moved enough to be parallel <laugh>, you know, they still would not deal with each other, but I got it directed to me, you know? And ...
Heidi Burgess (01:26:54): >So shuttle diplomacy, but in the same room.
Ron Wakabayashi (01:26:57): >Yeah. I mean, I think like in all our careers you end up with with situations like that surprises. Yeah. And, that one that was not, did not, I didn't have any sense of success in like kind of four convenings with them. We got to move a little further. We got, we got to ground rules. But it they weren't willing to sit down. This is, you know, they, they wanted to kinda just fight it out.
Heidi Burgess (01:27:38): >But they came to four meetings, which seems surprising if they just wanted to fight it out.
Ron Wakabayashi (01:27:43): >But part of that is face saving.
Heidi Burgess (01:27:46): >Yeah.
Ron Wakabayashi (01:27:48): >You know?
Heidi Burgess (01:27:51): >Well, let me, I keep on going back because I have questions that I think of as you're talking and then we go further, you made a distinction between neutrality and impartiality. Do you, was that just using two words for the same thing? Or do you make a distinction there?
Ron Wakabayashi (01:28:07): >I made you because I've not, I've not been able to find myself neutral, you know, like inside myself, I mean, sitting there, right. I've not found neutral. I found a degree of ability to be impartial.
Heidi Burgess (01:28:22): >Okay. So impartial is behavior to you and neutrality is what you feel, which...
Ron Wakabayashi (01:28:28): >Like, like even recently, when I was telling about like the Torrance PD guy said, look he, he asked me, well, they're concerned, like, how does AG feel about this? I said, why can't speak for the AG, but I'll tell you like the, just the conversations I have with them. And then the director's office is that I'm open with everything I'm doing as long as I'm free to, in other words, unless I tell you and we have an agreement that I'm not gonna say something. Yeah. I'll keep that. But outside of those kind of agreements that I have to, you know, that I make I generally treat like, whatever I'm saying and doing is that's among the parties. It's open, you know, because if I'm, you know, if you worry about what I'm doing over here, what I'm saying over here, that they, you know, I know that stuff goes on and like if I have to caucus with people, you know you know, it's just, I do it with disclosure because ...
Heidi Burgess (01:29:32): >So what, when you caucus, you say that, unless you tell me, I can't say this to the other side, I'm gonna be willing to repeat what happened here.
Ron Wakabayashi (01:29:41): >Yeah. Okay. Cause otherwise I have a hard time remembering what I can or can't say. Right. I want it to be like, if generally the things I don't, you know, like if you don't want me to, you know, this is not to be repeated, identify it for me, I'll respect that. But otherwise, you know, like I, you know, because there's things like, even in like like the thing with, even with this PD thing, like there are different community advocates of different sorts. Some would like to shut down the police department. Right. Others would like to reform it and others like love it, you know? And you know . . . I'm not gonna be in any one of those positions. I'm not gonna love it and I wanna shut them down.
Ron Wakabayashi (01:30:35): >And, the only way you, you know, like if, I'm talking to one group and well you talk to that group. Yeah. . . . [A]and I have the same understanding with them that I have with you. Right. Like, unless they tell me I can't talk about it, I could share it. And . . . I know it's awkward, something, like if they told me I can't talk about it, that could raise concerns, but you know, that's . . . part of the baggage. I gotta carry if that, if that's the case, but generally in terms of what I'm doing, like it's you know, I wanna remain as impartial as I can . . . and even perceived as impartial.
Heidi Burgess (01:31:22): >And do you see that as frequently problematic or sounds to me like the way you're describing, the way you deal with people, it would build trust pretty easily.
Ron Wakabayashi (01:31:36): >Generally speaking, I think most folks, yeah in most situations are not like so sensitive that this becomes an issue, but there are cases where it does, you know.
Heidi Burgess (01:31:49): >For instance,
Ron Wakabayashi (01:31:53): >Well, there's deep mistrust, which, you know, already, I mean, there is a historical mistrust . . . and it modifies over time, you know, like the crowd, like in an advocacy . . . there's different crowds that react that are out there, but you may be dealing with the one crowd segment that is really very unforgiving. And . . if it's a police thing, that police are evil, there's nothing . . . you can redeem about them. You know, I mean, I usually deal with that directly. So like, look, just look, I kinda understand you guys that, you know, there's nothing redeemable about the cops, so, you know, like you're not gonna wanna sit down with them. I don't think unless, unless to yell at them. Right. You know, I'm not into that. The only thing you do on your own, you know, my job is like, if we wanna sit down, see people work on something, you know, that's the work I do. I can't help with your yelling, you know, and don't have amplifiers and megaphones.
Heidi Burgess (01:33:04): >So you don't try to bring them around and get them to the table and to listen and stop yelling. You just tell 'em, nevermind, we'll go it without you.
Ron Wakabayashi (01:33:14): >Yeah. Just you know, and like a lot of times, like, they don't recognize it, but you can hear it. They're being positional. Yeah. And then you go back to like, sort of interest, like why? And saying like, you know, what would you do? You know, what would, if you were me, what would you do with that? You know, I mean, it sounds to me like that you either won't, or can't talk to them. And so that's wasting your time, my time, their time, you know, I mean, I'd like to see it fixed, but I, there this, another pathway in the conversation.
Heidi Burgess (01:33:49): >So that really brings me to another question that I was curious about. One of the reasons I was really interested in doing these interviews this round is it seems to me in terms of police, community relations, there are many more people here who are not here being where I live, but in the United States now who are framing police as evil, and we had all the shut down the police defund the police movements that didn't happen until George Floyd was killed. So do you just write those folks off and say that they've gotta do their thing and get it out of their system? Or do you somehow try to work with them?
Ron Wakabayashi (01:34:44): >No, I try to process it, you know, because like the phrase defund, the police means different things to different people.
Heidi Burgess (01:34:50): >Right.
Ron Wakabayashi (01:34:51): >So if you go into like, okay, what does that mean to you to defund it? You know because my understanding of it from different folks is for some, it means like fix.
Heidi Burgess (01:35:03): >Right?
Ron Wakabayashi (01:35:05): >Some people means defund like change in function. Like there's some of that like, like if we got code enforcement, like traffic tickets moved out of the police department, you know, and just pick it up on cameras and they send you a letter, you know? I mean, I can see that approach saying, okay, like so many things go sideways on the traffic stop. Like if we didn't have traffic stops, I mean, it just doesn't seem worth the traffic stop . . . all the risks that come with it, you know, both of the cop and for the citizen, you know, I mean like, you know, we have the technology, like if you run a red light, we can send you a letter, you know? And, or even if, you know, just that it's code enforcement, not law enforcement. I mean there's so, you know, so you just kind of process through like, what do you mean by defund? Because there are people say like, we want no police.
Heidi Burgess (01:36:00): >Right.
Ron Wakabayashi (01:36:01): >And I said, well, but there's other people that do because there's people that do bad things to them. Right . . . I don't know if you get consensus on that or you check that out, you know? I mean there's people who have that position, but to get consensus on, it seems like that's a stretch, you know, what's your . . you think you got that or a pathway to that? And . . . I can see that only in the ideal world like that, we're all kind of like know our own boundaries and we're not, you know, selfish or, you know, then maybe we don't need police.
Heidi Burgess (01:36:42): >Right.
Ron Wakabayashi (01:36:43): >You know, but you know, I mean just knowing myself, I think there's sometimes that, you know, need police just for me, you know, you know, I'm in a rush and I'm thoughtless.
Heidi Burgess (01:36:53): >Yeah.
Ron Wakabayashi (01:36:55): >You know . . . I can understand my individual thing. Like, you know, the straightest, the shortest distance saying two points is a straight line. So if I wanna get to the hospital straight line man, a hundred miles an hour, but if there's a school or there's, you know, like you know, daycare center . . . in my path, maybe I shouldn't be going a hundred miles an hour, you know? And people generally agree with stuff like that. Right. I think one of the things with folks is . . . in Hawaii have this phrase called "talk story" and,
Heidi Burgess (01:37:47): >And what's that mean?
Ron Wakabayashi (01:37:48): >And talk story just means like,
Heidi Burgess (01:37:50): >Oh, oh, tell story, I'm sorry. I didn't understand what you said.
Ron Wakabayashi (01:37:52): >No, they use the words "talk story". . . . It means the same thing, but you know, let's go talk story just, but ... I do think that that kind of storytelling is ... important. I mean, to I mean, even in like reframing, if we, if you reframe only answer the technical language of what's said and yeah. And depending on who your audience is, talking story is better. It's ... more understandable. I mean, one of the things I wanted that CRS that I asked the administration to do is like, you know, part of the training I'd like to have us do is like have training on interviewing and have training on storytelling.
Heidi Burgess (01:38:40): >Ah,
Ron Wakabayashi (01:38:43): >You know, because like, even like, like old cases, you know, think like there's, there's really a lot of stuff to be gleaned from like our work, you know, and the takeaways. I mean, and I'm really a fan of like our doing after action reports, but I mean, real after action reports where we study and there's not a consequence of disclosing, I messed up, I would do this differently. I mean that, you know, I wouldn't like real after action, you know?
Heidi Burgess (01:39:14): >And do you have those, did you, when you were at CRS, did you have those?
Ron Wakabayashi (01:39:18): >I think in my region I did, but I didn't use them for ... personnel purposes.
Heidi Burgess (01:39:25): >So what did they just go in a file and get stored away or were they used somehow?
Ron Wakabayashi (01:39:33): >I think they're used among like my staff, you know? But I wouldn't, I wouldn't transmit them to headquarters, you know, because they lack, they lack context. And it ... it's purpose is not you know supervision, the purpose is like learning, you know, I mean as an aspect of supervision, but you know, it's, it's really more narrowly supervision. Like what are the takeaways from that? You know I mean even little things like for us, you know, like making entry is ... something that we've gotta think about. Like, you know ... being with justice department gives you a certain kind of advantage in some ways, like if I call up a police chief or a, a mayor or someone like, hi, I'm calling from the department of justice. And I understand that this incident happened. Can you just kind of give me a rundown on what you guys, you know, what happened and what you guys are doing? You know even if I don't connect right away, says, can you get whoever gimme a call back, I'll get the call back or I'll get the connection now that like.
Heidi Burgess (01:40:47): >People feel defensive, however, is, is just saying you're from the Department of Justice threatening?
Ron Wakabayashi (01:40:52): >It is, it is. And I know that other times I come in and say, look, I'm with the Department of Justice, but I'm not enforcement. You know, I'm not investigatory. In fact, you know, I have a confidentiality requirement and a statute that's, you know, like, you know, like a year in jail or a thousand dollars fine. You know, I take confidentiality these serious, you know, there's, I mean, I think you make entry in different ways. Some, you know, like sometimes a cold entry, you know? Yeah. I do. I've exploited it to, you know to reach a city official that I've never had any contact with, you know, and now in retirement, I've had to learn to do it differently. Like with this talking to the police department here, I, that's a cold call calling, you know, and I said, hey, look, I'm retired.
Ron Wakabayashi (01:41:41): >You know, this is the work I did do with the Department of Justice, but I'm retired. I don't, but I'm working on a related kind of function and that's the reason for my call. And, you know, like this is the kind of issue that you guys are involved with. You know, I did work with this department, you know, on, on a similar issue the chief coming president of major city chiefs. Here's her number. If you wanna check me out, you know, you know, please do I, because I want you to be comfortable with it. You know, that, I'm just, you know, this is just not like some, some guy calling, you know, like out of the phone booth, right. We don't even have phone booths anymore, but but you know, but, but the entry is different. And even though the, the entry now is more complicated than just seeing I'm from DOJ.
Heidi Burgess (01:42:36): >Why?
Ron Wakabayashi (01:42:37): >Because before just saying I'm from DOJ, I'd be in, you know, and it'd be it's, it's simple to say, once I'm in, I could give the whole kind of look, this is who we are. I could do that. Right. But now I can't get in that quick.
Heidi Burgess (01:42:54): >Oh so you're saying, because you're not with DOJ, do you think it it's, it's the same for people who still are in CRS?
Heidi Burgess (01:43:03): >Or is, is DOJ not carry as much weight as it used to?
Ron Wakabayashi (01:43:07): >It does at different times, depends on what administration is in.
Heidi Burgess (01:43:11): >Right.
Ron Wakabayashi (01:43:12): >You, you can tell on the inauguration date the change in sentiment, you know, literally on the inauguration day, you know, there'll be a change, but but just in general, like, you know, like, cause most people are not all that partisan. If you call like a city or, you know, a law enforcement agency, you know DOJ is still DOJ I mean, you get entry.
Heidi Burgess (01:43:39): >Yeah.
Ron Wakabayashi (01:43:41): >And in fact, some of our people get badge heavy. I'm DOJ. You can go stop it. You're not, you're not who you're pretending to be. Right. You know, that's not what we do. What we do is better.
Heidi Burgess (01:43:55): >Sorry, go ahead.
Ron Wakabayashi (01:43:56): >I said, what we do is better than that ... yeah. But there are people who get badge heavy. There are people who actually carried badges for a while. You know, and that's you, like, as, as the human relations director for LA City, I have a badge. They gave me a badge, you know, I wouldn't carry that around. It just, I wouldn't, I didn't wanna be seen as law enforcement.
Heidi Burgess (01:44:23): >Yeah.
Ron Wakabayashi (01:44:25): >You know,
Heidi Burgess (01:44:26): >What percentage of your calls were ones who are you initiated with the cold call, as opposed to somebody saying, calling you and saying, hey, can you come in and help?
Ron Wakabayashi (01:44:37): >I think that changes over time. And when I first started, it was I'm making the calls. But after you're there, some of the years, you know, you get, you really kinda get to know the advocacy groups. You know, and then even within like sort of law enforcement agencies, the patrol guys that you ran into, you know, and now captains and commanders, you know, so they call you.
Heidi Burgess (01:45:02): >So it's more personal relationships than CRS being known. So whoever's at CRS, they just know to call CRS?
Ron Wakabayashi (01:45:10): >CRS. Isn't known, you know, it's not like the FBI, you know, like you're who ... you're Community Relations Service. Okay. Is that, is that, you know, and they think you're that you're a PR arm of the Attorney General's office. They think you are media. CRS, you know, like, and actually like, you know, we have, you know, we have windbreakers, there's windbreakers that have CRS on the back and there's, windbreakers that say, Department of Justice on the back and depending on how I'm assessing the environment I'm going into, I will wear a different windbreaker?
Heidi Burgess (01:45:49): >So windbreaker says anything or just a...
Ron Wakabayashi (01:45:54): >No, I have a blank, one blank
Heidi Burgess (01:45:55): >Blank one.
Ron Wakabayashi (01:45:58): >But no, you know, I mean, one of the things that, that like I'm a fan of is the thing I call identity management, you know, and because you and I, us in individually, we're the one constant in every transaction that we're in. And so if you can transfer that concept to the people that you're training, like you're the constant in every transaction, that's just, it, you know, you .. and anything you interact with. You're the one that's always there. And, but with different others that you're encountering, they see different things because we have, you know, you're a woman, you're a man you're old, you're young, you're strong, you're handsome. You're pretty, you're ugly. You know, you got all these different things with you guys you're blue, but blue is everything from pig to hero <laugh>, you know?
Ron Wakabayashi (01:46:51): >And so when you're hero, you know, and you can talk them. Yeah. You know, like, you know, they get their chest puffed up and they, you know, they don't have problems making entry, going to an event or whatever. But if you're the pig, you know, then so you, you can go through, like we do manage our identity, you know, you're conscious of what facets, because we're ... not any one of those things. We're all of those things. And you know, I think that to the ... extent that you can train cops to be agile, you know that, that gives them an insight in terms of how, you know a person with a disability or a person of color a woman, you know, or a gender minority, you know, how they're feeling because you know, like when you're having a conversation with someone, you can, you can kind of spot pretty quickly, which facets are showing up, you know, in how they're perceiving you, you know?
Ron Wakabayashi (01:47:56): >And often, when you're doing it . . . you can see that you're doing that to somebody, you know? And you can modify and say, hey, you know, I'm doing this, you know, and I don't, I don't mean to, I mean, it's incomplete, but it, but I think like it, the management of who you are helps you navigate your interactions with people. You know, if you're unconscious about it and unconscious by your own, as well as others, there's more reason for mistrust, you know, like it, and it's kind of the shorthand. You don't get it. Right. You know, and the quicker you can get to someone feeling like, I think he's been there before, you know, I think he gets it or he really gets it. You know, there's a whole continuum there. Entry is so different.
Ron Wakabayashi (01:48:51): >Like, I could feel like I've been talking to the, for this, this chief, you know, for this department and he was doing what he's supposed to do, he's protecting his chief. I don't, you know, you, I don't know who you are. If, if I say something, I don't know who you're gonna share that with and how that's gonna affect. And so we got to a place where I could talk to him about this, but, you know, I saw you doing your job, you know, and that's good. I respect that, you know, but I want, you know, like that, that's kinda what, the kind of stuff I do. And I'll tell you this, that I, you know, when I say respect that, you know, if we talk straight up and there's stuff that, that, you know, needs to be closely held, it'll be closely held, you know?
Ron Wakabayashi (01:49:37): >And then, you know, like, it's, it's kind of like dating is like that too. Right? You exchange your weirdness, you know, hey, I don't like spinach. I don't like broccoli, you know? Okay. I could live with that. You know, I'm homophobic. Well, that might be a little different, you know, but it's you know, the relationship building is exchanging kind of like little, your little idiosyncrasies and being okay with it, you know because the way I started off with this like he was very protective, but at the end, my last conversation like said, no, you did your job, man. You know ... and you know ... and when I sit down with the chief, I'm not tell him. So, you know, because I think that's important for him to know because he needs to have folks that he can trust around him.
Ron Wakabayashi (01:50:27): >And if I can give him that feedback that you know, that you, you know, look after the interest of the department or the chief. Now, if he's a snake, you know, I'm gonna try and get you, but you know, doesn't seem to be, seems like, you know, I mean he reached out to the AG to try to look at like what the department could do. He's a local guy. And then you know, there's a lot of things that you can, you know, and that's what I mean, my talking story, you know, it's like when I do talk to him and I've already talked to the agitant that way, you know I said, look in the beginning it's like, you know, this is sort of my interests in the case here. And this is what I know. And you know, so I'm doing as much disclosure as I can going in and just building on that to kind of build relationship.
Ron Wakabayashi (01:51:17): >But you know, but what I'm saying early on is that if you were DOJ, I would've got to the conversation with the chief much, much faster. I had to wait to the chief, actually met with the Department of Justice people. And then after he met with them, now the agitant says like, yeah, you mentioned, you know, Michael Newman. Yeah. You, you mentioned Vilma, you mention, he says, those are all the people who are doing this thing. I said, I know, that's what I told you. That's why I told you, you know, and I don't expect you to believe at that point. I mean, you could look you up in the directory, he says, yeah. But, but they mentioned you. I said, yeah, I knew that too because I talked to them, but, and I wish this was faster in some ways, but you know, that's the way it is and I'm retired. I got time, you know, it's you guys that don't have time.
Heidi Burgess (01:52:10): >I'm wondering this is slow with you and your position now. It would've been faster if you had been with DOJ, but would the trust have been there? It strikes me as you go straight to the chief saying that you're from DOJ and don't go through this slow trust building process. It might be more difficult to act for a while.
Ron Wakabayashi (01:52:33): >I don't know. I think either way you gotta do the trust building.
Heidi Burgess (01:52:36): >Yeah.
Ron Wakabayashi (01:52:37): >You know because you know, like the ... lack of trust with if you're DOJ, the identity is like, yeah, this may go to consent decree and pattern and practice, you know, and you know, I said, Hey, look, I know, I know folks in that department. And I know they're looking at it as well, but I don't talk to them, you know, just straight up. I don't talk to you know, and it's not that I don't like them. It's just doesn't work for me. I mean, I'll talk to them about specific situations. Like, and I know the DA's people are doing an investigation and I'll let you know, I've talked to one of them, you know she was the supervising district attorney, you know, in the courts here, which what, what the DA's office is looking at this, like, how do they characterize the department is that you guys are aggressive, but you're you're professional. I says, that works, man. I like know if you just listen to that. But that means when the DA's folks are, think professional, you know, they're not gonna be out to get you. So, you know, I mean, like, I think it's still incremental building;
Heidi Burgess (01:53:53): >Right.
Ron Wakabayashi (01:53:53): >Even if I got in right away, you know, he would suspect that like, you know, if I was DOJ, you know, it's like, you're, .... kind of the, you know the decoy for the pattern in practice.
Heidi Burgess (01:54:07): >Right.
Ron Wakabayashi (01:54:08): >You know, and that just costs cities so much money. And, you know, they don't want that. And I don't blame them. But on the other hand, like I've seen the departments where that's the only way these guys are gonna change, man. You know? So, but, so I think the experience helps. Yeah. I know. I know for me, one of the things like when you, like in the training with patrol guys, when they, and the asked me, like, what department did you come out of? You know, I feel really good about this now. I didn't come out of the department, but it says, you know, like I've got enough kinda lens.
Heidi Burgess (01:54:44): >Yeah.
Ron Wakabayashi (01:54:45): >That, you know
Heidi Burgess (01:54:47): >Really helps.
Ron Wakabayashi (01:54:48): >Yeah. And I've seen that just in so many places. So, I mean, I try to achieve that and earn it, you know?
Heidi Burgess (01:54:59): >Great.
Ron Wakabayashi (01:55:01): >So,
Heidi Burgess (01:55:01): >Well, we are just about at 12 o'clock.
Ron Wakabayashi (01:55:05): >Okay. And 11 o'clock my time.
Heidi Burgess (01:55:08): >Okay. You're right. 11, o'clock your time, but we've gone two hours.
Ron Wakabayashi (01:55:12): >Okay.
Heidi Burgess (01:55:13): >And I think we jumped all over this list of questions and I have touched on most of them at this point, I think. Okay. I wanna go through and do an assessment about what things, if any, that we haven't covered, that I'd really like to talk to you some more, I might decide that. Nope. We really got it covered. Or I'm not sure we're gonna need another full two hours, but let me just take a look at it and get back to you and see where we stand. But in the meantime, thank you again very much. You've been tremendously generous with your time and I really appreciate it. And
Ron Wakabayashi (01:55:52): >There's one question on this list.
Heidi Burgess (01:55:55): >Yeah.
Ron Wakabayashi (01:55:55): >About mentorship. And you, what I'd say?
Heidi Burgess (01:55:59): >What would you say?
Ron Wakabayashi (01:56:01): >Your parties are the ones that teach you.
Heidi Burgess (01:56:04): >Well, that's consistent with what you were just saying.
Ron Wakabayashi (01:56:07): >Yeah. You learn so much from them and if you kinda just kind of, and you give them the space to give you feedback.
Heidi Burgess (01:56:15): >Okay.
Ron Wakabayashi (01:56:17): >Okay. Thank you!
Heidi Burgess (01:56:17): >Thank you much. Talk to you, I at least wanna hear I'll maybe come back to you in six months and say, hey, Ron, what happened with the police situation? And I don't remember where it is, but curious to see how this one comes out.
Ron Wakabayashi (01:56:35): >Well, it's fascinating because like he wants to use truth and reconciliation approaches he want, you know, and the, and they're interested in creating another CRS, like entity within the state AG's office
Heidi Burgess (01:56:48): >Uhhuh.
Ron Wakabayashi (01:56:48): >And they've had one before and that the person that directed that office is back in there running and running the reparations commission work, you know, and the racial profile. I mean that, that's why I think this there's a cosmic thing of like, we're all it's, it's so tied together, you know, from like 30 years back, you know, and it's all kind of having a confluence. It just feels like there's a reason for this.
Heidi Burgess (01:57:11): >Yeah.
Ron Wakabayashi (01:57:12): >Yeah. And so yeah, come back. I mean like, like the sequel in six months, other be good one way or the other.
Heidi Burgess (01:57:18): >Right. All right. Well, let's plan on that, but I may come back to you might well come back to you before six months too, to cover the ...
Ron Wakabayashi (01:57:26): >Well that's fine. That's fine. I told you I'm retired. As you could tell I'm ...
Heidi Burgess (01:57:31): >You're retired the same way I'm retired. <Laugh>
Ron Wakabayashi (01:57:34): >Yeah. But you know, but work and play are still just essentially expenditures of energy, right?
Heidi Burgess (01:57:41): >Yeah.
Ron Wakabayashi (01:57:42): >This is play.
Heidi Burgess (01:57:43): >Right. Well that's what I was thinking is yeah. The same thing. They're the same thing for me. Yeah. But we're lucky that way. Other people aren't so lucky.
Ron Wakabayashi (01:57:51): >Yeah. So enjoy it. Enjoy it
Heidi Burgess (01:57:53): >I am, you too. And I'll talk to you.
Ron Wakabayashi (01:57:57): >All right. Take
Heidi Burgess (01:57:58): >Care soon or in six months. Okay. Thanks very much. Bye.
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Civil Rights Mediation Oral History Project Phase 2 As a public service, Beyond Intractability hosts this site in conjunction with the earlier Phase I of the Civil Rights Mediation Oral History Project. IRB statement for Phase II interviews “Research conducted pursuant to Ohio State University Office of Responsible Research Practices IRB protocol 2021E0493.” |
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Civil Rights Mediation Oral History Project Phase 2 As a public service, Beyond Intractability hosts this site in conjunction with the earlier Phase I of the Civil Rights Mediation Oral History Project. IRB statement for Phase II interviews “Research conducted pursuant to Ohio State University Office of Responsible Research Practices IRB protocol 2021E0493.” |
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