Dispute Resolution Team Hopes To Be Mediator In/Around: West Central

The guy next door buys and sells used cars, always parking them in front of his neighbors’ houses.

The renters across the alley are noisy and messy.

The neighborhood bully repeatedly terrorizes the kids at the bus stop.

This is how the problems start. After weeks, months or even years of festering, someone slashes the tires, fires a gun over the heads of the renters, or punches the neighborhood bully in the mouth. West Central Neighborhood Resource Officer Tim Conley said it happens all the time. People frequently report minor problems to Crime Check and 911, but police never get to them.

“People need to start talking, before they get so emotionally involved in these things that they can’t talk about them,” Conley said.

Now available through COPS West, the West Central Neighborhood Dispute Resolution Team hopes to do just that - help people talk about their disagreements. It is the first neighborhood-based mediation service in Spokane. Five teams of two volunteer mediators rotate weeklong shifts.

Funding for the program and training originally came from a grant obtained by the Spokane School District. When that grant expired, the costs were picked up by the Washington State University Cooperative Extension Office’s Family Focus program.

Some West Central residents call in to specifically ask for mediation. Others simply make a police report that Conley sees and refers to mediators. Conley thinks the service will go a long way in preventing the escalation of minor disputes into major police headaches.

West Central Community Center Director Don Higgins said the program strives to change the way people in the neighborhood handle problems.

“The strategy was not only to create an alternative means of settling disputes but to create a neighborhood consciousness and ethic,” he said. Other programs teach similar conflict resolution to elementary and middle school students, as well as to parents.

All the programs were spawned two years ago by a task force on neighborhood safety, Higgins said.

“There was a universal concern about the ineffectiveness of the 911 system,” Higgins said.

After Police Chief Terry Mangan explained exactly what calls officers realistically could respond to, the task force members concluded that neighborhood residents needed an alternate form of resolving conflicts.

It takes as many as 40 hours of training and practice to become a good mediator, said Cathy McGinty, assistant coordinator of the program. So it’s taken almost a year to qualify enough volunteers to offer the program to the public.

Mediators will not tackle problems that involve code enforcement, custodial care of children or matters where a crime has been committed, said Don McCloskey, coordinator of the resolution program.

Conley said he hopes the program will spread to other neighborhoods.

“Everywhere people need to learn how to do this - before things get out of hand,” he said.

Anyone interested in the services offered by the dispute resolution team can contact COPS West at 625-4092.