Ajenai Clemmons: Even though there is this tendency to wanna see yourself as the good guy chasing the bad guy, frankly, that's not so easy to determine. And sometimes it's just not relevant. It's not about bad guys and good guys. It's folks struggling, and folks who need help, and folks who are having their worst day. And that's not the sum total of who they are.

Sam Fuqua: That's Ajenai Clemmons. And this is Well, That Went Sideways! A podcast that serves as a resource to help people have healthy, respectful communication. We present a diversity of ideas, tools, and techniques to help you transform conflict in relationships of all kinds. On this episode, we talk with Ajenai Clemmons about conflicts with law enforcement, and about how understanding and meeting public expectations can reduce conflicts with the police. Ajenai Clemmons is an assistant professor at the Scrivner Institute of Public Policy at the University of Denver. Dr. Clemmons holds a PhD in public policy. Prior to her work in academia, she helped establish and run Denver's Office of the Independent Monitor, the agency that investigates complaints against city and county law enforcement officers. She also served as policy director for the National Black Caucus of State Legislators. And while working for Denver's Office of the Independent Monitor, Ajenai, who also goes by AJ Clemmons, sometimes worked with our co-host and professional mediator, Mary Zinn.

I'm Sam Fuqua, co-host of the program with Mary Zinn. Hi Mary.

Mary Zinn: Hi Sam.

Sam Fuqua: And we're so pleased to be joined by Dr. Ajenai Clemmons. Hello.

Ajenai Clemmons: Hi Sam. Hi Mary. It's so great to be here. Thank you.

Mary Zinn: Welcome, Dr. Clemmons. Thank you for joining us. Would you start by telling us a little bit about your background and how you became interested in the community, and policing specifically?

Ajenai Clemmons: It's been many, many years in the works and, and I think, you know, there's certainly a personal connection there. Not many people know this, but my own godfather was actually, uh, killed by law enforcement in Connecticut, um, in a situation that, um, I think would probably be handled a lot differently, uh, today. And that was something that was really traumatic, uh, for my father, who was his best friend. And so my father became pretty intent on making sure that, you know, the same thing wouldn't happen with his son, my brother. So, um, I think in our family there were certainly conversations, you know, there was also a deep appreciation for, for police and their work, but certainly there were always concerns there about personal safety. And so, um, it was something that was on my radar. And then I should, I should also say that I grew up in different places. I grew up in, um, in Denver, in Park Hill, and, um, then moved out to southeast Denver in the tech center in Greenwood Village. And there, um, in Greenwood Village, uh, certainly I, I had the experience of the very friendly neighborhood officer, the officer who would give me a ride to school if I was running late, you know. The officer who, uh, crowned me, uh, the winner of the dare uh, uh, contest, you know, where I won the very cool teddy bear with a cowboy hat. Um, so I had these really kind of warm and fuzzy, um, experiences with police as well, and knew what was possible.

So there came a time, um, after working for, um, a, a Hispanic law firm, working with primarily Mexican, uh, nationals, um, very vulnerable, um, workers, uh, who were, who were injured on the job. And there came a time when, um, Denver was just on the heels of back-to-back controversial police shootings, um, of people of color, of Paul Childs, who was a 15-year-old African American kid. Um, and then Frank Lobato, who was an elderly Hispanic male who was killed, um, by Denver Police. And, uh, there was this opportunity to completely transform civilian oversight in Denver. The office was being set up and so, uh, I, I was hired as the community relations ombudsman, and I, and I felt that this was an opportunity for me to, to bring, to help bring transparency, you know, to government, to help ease, uh, community police relations to, um, to build community police mediation program, but also to address some of the more structural issues in terms of fairness, and in terms of, uh, quality of, of government service delivery.

Mary Zinn: AJ, what was the name of the office that you were setting up to accomplish all of that?

Ajenai Clemmons: Sure. It was the Office of the Independent Monitor, and now it has more than twice as many employees as it did, uh, when I was part of the original team that set it up. The purpose of the office was to oversee the internal affairs investigations, uh, the allegations of misconduct for both police and sheriff and fire. And, um, and our role was really, uh, neutral. Um, you know, we were not representing any one side. Our, our, our mission was really to ensure that those investigations were fair, thorough, quality, and timely.

Mary Zinn: How successful were you at meeting those goals you just mentioned?

Ajenai Clemmons: Wow, that is, that's a difficult question. I think that, you know, we did a really good job of trying to answer that with data. Um, it's hard to measure in a lot of ways, right? Because particularly when you're complaint based, it's hard to know if complaints go up, if that's a good thing or a bad thing, right? Because if complaints actually increase, uh, from year to year, it may be that more people actually have faith in the system, right? Because they see that things are getting done. They see that, um, people care. They see that there's responsiveness on the part of government. Um, and so more people can actually believe in the system and therefore, um, express that agency to file a complaint. On the other hand, you know, it could be a bad thing if, uh, if people sort of feel that, um, no progress is being made, their voice doesn't matter, and so they actually complain less. So, you know, that's where you have to go deeper, um, to understand, uh, how people are perceiving the situation, but also looking at some of those kind of objective, um, indicators of do the police seem to be increasing the quality of their investigations? Uh, does the discipline imposed seem to be more reasonable than it has been in the past? Um, is it more in align, alignment with, you know, the, um, severity of the violation? Um, and so those are things that as an office, um, you know, we were very keenly paying attention to.

But I will say in terms of the, the Citizen Police Mediation Program or the Community Police Mediation Program, which we did have something like a 99 percent compliance rate with folks filling out those forms. And so we know because we did a baseline, uh, survey of folks who had been in the complaint process before our agency was erected that, um, that folks who went through the, the, the mediation, uh, process, both on the complainant side and on the police side, were far more satisfied. Um, I wanna say something like, we increased satisfaction, something like by 80 percent, um, through the mediation process. So it was, it was definitely a huge boon to the City and County of Denver.

Sam Fuqua: How many complaints came across your desk during your time there?

Ajenai Clemmons: I would say in my five years, um, I personally had not handled probably around 2,000. Um, in terms of the mediation program, I oversaw the completion of around 250 mediations, and during, during my time there, that put us, uh, second in the nation behind New York City. Um, so I liked to say that we were number one if you consider per capita.

Sam Fuqua: I, I'm curious, was there a typical complaint, or what kinds of stories did you hear?

Ajenai Clemmons: Oh, you know, thanks. A lot of them tended to be about courtesy. You know, folks feeling that the officer was rude and they were su, well, uh, some folks were surprised. Folks who were raised to believe that officers were their friends tended to be quite shocked. Other folks were more, you know, this is the fifteenth time and I, you know, I'm sick and tired of being sick and tired. You know, that was more the nature of that complaint. Certainly we had, uh, complaints about excessive force, about, um, about, um, profiling and, and a few, I mean, especially if they're internally generated by the police department, um, or by the sheriff department, tho, those tended to be pretty serious in terms of, um, like con, conduct unbecoming. So it could be something like, you know, scalping tickets or, you know, just stealing a bottle of beer or DUIs or things like that. Uh, and some of them were, were really very tragic kinds of cases. But I would say that, uh, from the, from the community side, discourtesy was probably the, the largest category.

Mary Zinn: I remember some of those mediations that the citizen would have been stopped or contacted by the officer. Tell me if this is typical AJ. They might have said, he treated me or she treated me like a criminal. And it feels like discourtesy to someone who's never been in contact with the police before.

Ajenai Clemmons: Absolutely. That was very interesting. On some level, you know, and this goes back to the, some folks being shocked, especially white folks being shocked of that interaction and just, you know, "I was raised that officers are your friends." And in effect, because a lot of the interactions that I had with community members took place over the phone, and they didn't know what to make of my voice, they were making some assumptions oftentimes, and so they might actually say something like, "I mean, I can't believe the officer treated me like a criminal. I don't even look like a criminal, you know? I'm white. I'm middle class. I'm petite. I'm blonde. I mean, I'm college educated." All kinds of things. So that was, um, that was, those were some interesting lessons for me. But, um, and then on the, on the other side, uh, going back to the exasperation for, you know, communities who had experienced these kinds of interactions more frequently, you know, it was very painful. And it was this slow burn and it was like, I'm tired of being treat, I'm tired of being treated like a criminal, and I've had enough. Mm-hmm.

Mary Zinn: When I mentioned that people would say that in a mediation, the abruptness of the officer's tone...

Ajenai Clemmons: Mm-hmm.

Mary Zinn: ...was often what they were talking about.

Ajenai Clemmons: Mm-hmm.

Mary Zinn: And they weren't soft and gentle and inquiring.

Ajenai Clemmons: Mm-hmm.

Mary Zinn: They were making a stop that put their lives in danger. So, they were abrupt and they, they were not as courteous as the person who was stopped would have wished.

Ajenai Clemmons: Absolutely. Absolutely. I mean, and, and there's, and there's some literature behind that too. I mean, people want the opportunity to be heard, um, and they feel like, you know, that they're providing a service. So, even though they know that officers have power, they still wanna have that voice, and want, um, you know, to feel like they have a fair, they've had a fair process and a fair hearing. And so, um, proponents of procedural justice would say that even if the ultimate outcome is not what, um, people want, that, if the, if that, if the process itself was fair, um, if they felt like the officer had their best interest at heart, uh, that they would still, um, perceive that as like a fair process and a, and a reasonable outcome, and the officer was just doing their job.

Mary Zinn: Dr. Clemmons, would you talk a little bit about your research? I understand you did project that involved how people do feel about their interactions with police, and what they ultimately expect or could expect in their community.

Ajenai Clemmons: I did a project in which I conducted in-depth interviews of young, black men living in the most heavily policed, as well as socioeconomically distressed area of Durham, North Carolina. And, um, and, and the community, it, it had experienced a lot of poverty for a very long time. Um, and this is not something where they just perceived that there's additional, um, police enforcement, but where the police themselves, um, you know, are talking about this is their target. And in fact, they called it the Bullseye Initiative, um, which was unfortunately named, but they saturated the area, um, in order to affect the high homicide rates and, and, um, and attempted homicide rates. And so this was a, a situation in which these young men were at tremendous risk, both from civilian homicide, and from officer homicide, and officer aggression. And so I specifically wanted to hear from them, um, in terms of what would help them to feel safe, and, uh, what their policy preferences would be. And so, um, I had two, two-hour plus conversations with these 18- to 29-year-old men and, uh, in person, and this is, and, and I, and I suspended the interviews that, COVID, but these were confidential conversations, and I learned a lot of things, a lot of things.

I would say, overall, in contrast to a lot of the sort of caricaturization and the characterization of, um, of folks in a, particularly young folks, in just being like F the police and, and having very superficial kinds of, superficially presented, um, what their views are, and that they're very one dimensional. And that's not what I found at all. What I found was very nuanced, very complex feelings toward police. And I'll just give you one example. I asked a couple of questions. How do you feel about police now? And later in the interview, I ask, have any of your feelings about police changed over time or have they remained the same? And over three-quarters of the young men had what I would call mixed assessments, mixed feelings about police, where they were simultaneously expressing both positive and negative interaction, or excuse me, positive and negative feelings toward police. And, a third of those feelings changed over time. So they were actually dynamic, which is very interesting. Um, three of them got worse over time. They got, as they grew more concerned, but four of them actually improved over time as they had more positive interactions with officers. And so I found that, you know, not just fascinating but important. So, you know, complex, nuanced feelings about police.

And what I argue is, what they're trying to achieve is more predictability on two fronts, you know, very strategically. Uh, one is to, you know, if you think about all the possible interactions, all the possible outcomes you could have with officers, they're trying to remove the most, sort of, negative possible outcomes, those extreme negative possible outcomes, just kind of lock those off and take those off the table. And the other thing that they're trying to do is smooth out those in individual interactions, those fluctuations that seem to be arbitrary, so that there's these logical connection between what they would expect officers to do, and what they do. Or what they, what they want to do and what they think officers will do in return. Um, it's sort of smoothing out those interactions. So, they're trying to mitigate risk, and that's really, you know, something that they believe is a normal, natural, universal, uh, desire. They don't think that what they're wanting is anything that anyone else doesn't want. And they frankly believe it's something that their white counterparts already enjoy. So it's, it's, it's something where it's like, they believe that, you know, they already know what's needed to be done. This, they're already doing it, you know, for our fellow citizens. Um, and so this is what we want for ourselves. We're owed this as Americans and as human beings. And so you see these very strong themes of American citizenship and of human rights coming out in some of their answers.

Sam Fuqua: They're looking for police officers to be nicer? Is that a, a overly simplistic way to say it? Or more polite?

Ajenai Clemmons: So, yes, but it, but it's more than that. So for example, if I ask them what they want in a police officer, right? I ask them about their morals, their standards, you know, ethics, uh, what behaviors they think are important, what, uh, traits they think are important in police officers. You kind of put all that together and there are some themes from that that emerge that they, they want officers that are just, that are law abiding themselves, that are, that care about procedure, and do things the right way. Right? They want officers who are professional, who are not taking out things on people, who are actually passionate about their jobs because they actually believe that it's very difficult to be an officer. It's a hard job, and not everyone can do it. And so, um, they want, they want folks who are not just in it for a paycheck, but who see it as a calling, and they're passionate about it. Um, they want officers who are communicative because they know that officers have to interact with all kinds of people, and so they want them to have those communication skills, um, which they also see them as needing to resolve situations proactively and, and in real time. And they want officers who are invested in the community so that they actually care not only about the people and their outcomes, but about the community itself. Um, that they're able to see themselves as a part of it, um, that they're able to kind of roll their sleeves up and dive in.

So they see that officer position as inherent leaders because of the power they hold. And so trying to match up that leadership of their position with their leadership in practice on a daily basis. Caring for people. They want them to be composed. They want them to be able to manage their own emotions, and fear. They know it's, you know, there, there, there are real risks and it's a scary job, but that they need to be able to manage their own fear and their own emotions, um, and so that they can provide that leadership to resolving situations peacefully, so that they are themselves not bringing an extra risk to the situation. And they want officers who are discerning and adaptive. So, they recognize that officers hold a lot of discretion. They wield tremendous discretion and power, and they want them to be discerning because they know that there's a lot of gray. And even though there's this tendency to wanna see yourself as the good guy chasing the bad guy, frankly, that's not so easy to determine. And sometimes it's just not relevant. It's not about bad guys and good guys. It's folks struggling, and folks who need help, and folks who are having their worst day, and that's not the sum total of who they are.

Mary Zinn: Would you tell us a little bit about the risk? You were talking about the power that police officers have. And for people who don't interact with them, I don't know that that sense of risk and power balance is that play. And how is it different for the people that you interviewed?

Ajenai Clemmons: You know, when we look at how a lot of deadly force situations happen, a lot of them start off with these very simple kinds of interactions, like pulling someone over for a tail light. And, particularly as it pertains to African Americans. And so there's that concern there. And for the young men that I interviewed, about 38 percent of them had a personal relationship with someone who had been killed by a police officer somewhere in the country. So these, this is not, this is not abstract for them, right? So, you know, you have the, the worst possible outcome, which is death, uh, which can come about in seemingly random ways, uh, from their perspective. But you also have just more common, uh, kinds of threats like aggression, you know, being hurt physically, having a gun pointed in your face, um, which a lot of them shared with me had happened to them. A lot of them. And, I mean in some cases where, you know, they weren't even the suspect. Or, or they had witnessed a police officer point a gun at their grandmother, in their grandmother's face looking for someone else, um, and curse their grandmother out, or manhandle their mother, or manhandle their sister. So, what they're trying to achieve, you know, in their interactions because they want police to protect them, they want police to protect them from criminal threats, um, but they also want police to stop unnecessarily harming and threatening them and the community members. And so they're trying to, to create more predictable scenarios so that, um, so that they can mitigate all these different risks and, um, create safer outcomes for themselves and those they love.

Sam Fuqua: One hopes that in their training and their ongoing continuing education, police officers are informed of what the community expects of them, including these qualities not only of courtesy, but of discernment and, uh, trust building behavior. Is that happening in, in your view? Uh, I'm sure it varies department by department, but how are we doing in helping our police officers be better in these ways you've just described?

Ajenai Clemmons: Oh, well, I mean, there are some jurisdictions that likely do it better than other jurisdictions, um, because there are, you know, 19,000 law enforcement jurisdictions in the US, but there are definitely ways that it, that it can be improved. You know, I asked them several questions about trust. About whether they trust police. If so, why? You know, if not, why not? And you know, this is something that was kind of intended to be a yes or no question, but was anything but a yes or no question, and actually again, within the, in line with the nuance and the complexity, ended up being, um, very interesting in the responses. So, a strong minority did not trust police. A slight majority were willing to trust them to some extent. And, and so the things that negatively impacted their trust were considerations of this sort of structural environment of whether they felt that the police were connected to the community, um, or whether, like did they express knowledge of the community? Did they understand the community's values or norms or people or places? Um, uh, do they have a basic, you know, grasp of the community that they're, that they're patrolling? Or they doing things that kind of like, that see, that are ignorant and that put them in harm's way even, right? There's a, appear to be accountability.

So if there's an officer who's consistently doing things, and they're complaining, and there's no, no result, that suggests that that officer is not accountable to anyone, not accountable to the community, um, but particularly if, uh, that officer is not even behaving the way that the other officers behave, and is not being corrected or is not being removed, right, that, that officer is accountable to no one. So they're considering these, these sort of structural issues of accountability and how well the department is perhaps communicating with that community as well, you know, when complaints are happening. The second, the second consideration is officer behavior. Are officers threatening? Are they honest? Are they dishonest? Are they stealing? Are they, you know, do they hesitate when there's, when something happens, or do they rush in and try to, as, you know, help? When I say hesitate, what I mean is do they wait for everything to clear? Do they allow violence to continue unabated or do they actually like intervene and do their best to restore peace? So those are things where they're actually looking at office, individual officer behavior over time.

And then the third piece is, are the officers actually making the effort, uh, to gain trust? Just because you have a badge, it doesn't mean that you're trustworthy. And that's something that's very hard for some folks to hear because where they are, there's, there's a really strong narrative of heroism. And so this is a different paradigm where it's, it's not so much that they are always actively distrusting police, but that they're not making a special effort to trust them. That they actually want to get to know that particular officer and make sure that that particular officer is trustworthy. And the way that that officer needs to do that is by demonstrating their character, is by demonstrating honesty, by demonstrating that they care, by being vulnerable, right? By, by reciprocating trust. If the officer is acting like a robot and doesn't trust the community, then why should the community trust the officer, right? So it's a, it's a different way of approaching it that I think needs to be appreciated when you're where, when you're in a, just like kind of generally a low trust environment and trusting the wrong person can get you killed. And that includes if there are officers who, for example, are playing games, who tell on, you know, folks and say, oh, so and so's who, you know, this so and so is who ratted you out. Or if officers are dropping people, purposely picking them up and dropping them off in a, in a, in, in a neighborhood that they know is dangerous for them. You know, these are the things that really chip away at that trust.

And, um, and unfortunately, you know, a lot of negative experiences will affect other officers who are doing what they're supposed to be doing. But I think the hope here, the hope that we can take away from these interviews is that, that a lot of people actually make allowances for that. That they actually do pay attention to differences between officers, and allow officers to gain their trust. And I think that that's, that's one of the most, um, important and impactful, I think, findings that we can really leverage in terms of policy. But those departments absolutely have to be, I, I'm not trying to problematize, um, if, if someone doesn't feel comfortable trusting, what I'm saying is that, um, departments have to take that very seriously and they need to address it in terms of, of structure, of policy, and those officers individually also winning and gaining trust. That is a gift. It's a gift. It's an act of intimacy and it, and it cannot be taken for granted.

Mary Zinn: And the building of trust then, the whole department gains in relationship to the community that if they're connected, as you described was a wish that they be connected to the community, and things get better in those communities for everyone, for the officers and for the, the community citizens. That can happen. I would appreciate your offering some hope in this. And I would also ask about public policy, which is your area now that you're teaching at the University of Denver. How can we understand the impact of public policy on these issues?

Ajenai Clemmons: Oh, I think public policy is huge. I mean, we have to appreciate that, um, that rules matter, that laws matter, that incentives matter, and that disincentives matter. For example, you know, when we, we think we can think about some more recent, um, reforms in policing that have saved thousands and thousands of lives, and that's something like reducing police chases. In roughly maybe a decade, a little over a decade, they were just something like 11,000 deaths, um, from police chases. Some of the, many of those were innocent bystanders. Some of those were actually other police officers or the police officer themselves doing the chase that accidentally killed himself or herself. Some of those were the suspect and some of those were people in the suspect's car, including kids. So, um, you know, that's, that's one policy change where most departments across the country said, okay, we're going to pretty much stop police chases or have very, very selective criteria for when chases can take place. And it can't be, you know, stealing some gas at a grocery store, so we're gonna chase them across, you know, at 120 miles per hour.

You know, it really needs to be very, very serious and dangerous threats to the community. Shooting at moving vehicles is another one, and, and you see it a lot even in movies where an officer kind of stands and shoots in a vehicle and tries to get the driver to stop. But the reality is, is that if the officer actually does manage to incapacitate the driver, now you have a 4,000 pound missile barreling through the streets. So, um, that's something that has caused a lot of suffering, frankly. And so a, attempts to limit that have, have seen impacts across the country as well. So, in terms of, um, you know, what we can do more of, certainly unnecessarily pointing guns, pointing weapons at people is causing a lot of trauma, and that's something that they can reduce. I mean, and not only the traumatic impact of that, but also just the elevated risk, you know, when you're taking out your weapons, um, when it's not even a deadly force situation. So, so that raises the risk of accidents. So, that's something that could be addressed through much stronger policies. A lot of departments don't even consider it to be a use of force to point your weapon at someone, which is unimaginable really, if you were in that position. So, how can that not be considered a use of force? Um, and that needs to be tracked, it needs to be monitored, it needs to be, um, reviewed, you know, with audits. There needs to be some policy around it. Uh, there needs to be limitations to it. Um, there needs to be training around it. And then, um, you know, those audits of body cam footage just so that the supervisor and others, uh, outside the chain of command can, um, help that officer to understand what are some better ways to be handling that situation.

Mary Zinn: Thank you so much for giving us this information about the importance of trust in relationships, and what the police department can step up to in expectations that there's a possibility all of that could happen if we know clearly what the expectations are, and how that fits in with public safety, how those things come together. What would you say to each of us in our role in creating public safety?

Ajenai Clemmons: That's a fantastic question, Mary. I mean, an important question and a difficult question. It's important that we understand that safety is a collective thing, that we all have a responsibility to uphold it. But we're also responsible for feelings of safety. So for example, if we feel unsafe, I think we do need to interrogate why we feel unsafe, and take responsibility for that. When I was a, um, ombudsman for the City and County of Denver, um, heard people who were afraid of other people because they were standing in line waiting to be hired for a job that morning downtown, or because they were teenagers who were gathered together on a sidewalk near the river with their feet outstretched. I heard people make appeals to police officers that were totally unconstitutional because they felt unsafe and they wanted officers to enforce that, and they wanted them to do something, do something about this, right? I feel uncomfortable 'cause I see this. We have to be, uh, have some ownership over our own sense of safety and make sure that, uh, we are also being good citizens and not, um, asking officers to do things that are unconstitutional. At the same time, this, these questions of justice and, and, and equity are very much a long road, you know, this is the, we gotta think of the long game and um, and we can't get tired. And so it's important for us to stay concerned, to not give up, to not grow weary, to pace ourselves, and to remember to be, you know, empathetic. Uh, just because something doesn't happen to us doesn't mean it doesn't happen. And so we need to remain listening to each other and engage with one another's concerns and, um, and continue that dialogue. Just be open to that dialogue. I think we've, we've lost too much of that today.

Sam Fuqua: I just wanna thank you, Dr. Ajenai Clemmons, for sharing some of your research and your perspective on these important issues of trust and how we interact with law enforcement in the way that, that works for everybody. Thank you.

Ajenai Clemmons: Oh, thank you so much, Sam. This has just been an honor and a pleasure. I would like to, if I, if I could, just end with a quote that, uh, one of the young men I interviewed shared with me. Um, this was a heartfelt appeal that he had for politicians and for the public to, to be concerned about what was going on in their community. And he said, I, I named him Joseph, he's actually just 20 years old when he, when he makes this comment, "I would tell politicians to more so hear the letter, not the law of what's being said, and try to understand people's feelings, not just what they're saying. What comes out of their mouth is ultimately influenced by how they feel. So if you can understand how someone feels, then you're more so to meet their expectations, not just do what they tell you to do. To say it in other words, when you understand how someone feels, you're more so to not necessarily make the same mistake again. If they understand how we feel when they're reading the analysis, and not just what we're saying, but see in what we are saying, like how we feel, it would help them to make better decisions about how to accommodate what we're saying."

Sam Fuqua: Dr. Ajenai Clemmons is an assistant professor at the Scrivner Institute of Public Policy at the University of Denver.

Thanks for listening to Well, That Went Sideways! We produce new episodes twice a month. You can find them wherever you get your podcasts, and on our website, sidewayspod.org. We also have information on our guests and links to more conflict resolution resources at the website. That's sidewayspod.org. Our program is produced by Mary Zinn, Jes Rau, Norma Johnson, Alexis Miles, and me, Sam Fuqua. Our theme music is by Mike Stewart. And this podcast is a partnership with The Conflict Center, a Denver-based nonprofit that provides practical skills and training for addressing everyday conflicts. Find out more at conflictcenter.org.