IJAHP Article: Guiora, Minutolo, L. Vargas, M. Vargas, Zoffer/Enhancing police-community relations via a conflict resolution approach International Journal of the Analytic Hierarchy Process 1 Vol 15 Issue 1 2023 ISSN 1936-6744 https://doi.org/10.13033/ijahp.v15i1.1079 ENHANCING POLICE-COMMUNITY RELATIONS VIA A CONFLICT RESOLUTION APPROACH Amos Guiora S.J. Quinney College of Law University of Utah amos.guiora@law.utah.edu Marcel Minutolo Rockwell School of Business Robert Morris University minutolo@rmu.edu Luis Vargas Katz Graduate School of Business University of Pittsburgh lgvargas@pitt.edu Margaret Vargas Katz Graduate School of Business University of Pittsburgh mao74@pitt.edu H.J. Zoffer Katz Graduate School of Business University of Pittsburgh zoffer@katz.pitt.edu ABSTRACT Despite calls for community-oriented policing and the recognition that it results in improved relationships between the police and community as well as improved public security outcomes, police-community relations are arguably at an all-time low. Part of the challenge in achieving enhanced police-community relations is a disparate understanding of what each party wants and what each party can provide as well as prioritizing these factors. We present a project that worked to improve police-community relations through a conflict resolution process using the Analytic Hierarchy Process. The project was conducted with a group of police officers serving an urban, predominately African American community and representatives of the community over a period of several workshops. The workshops identified the goals, criteria, and objectives of each party as well as the perception of the other party’s goals, criteria, and objectives. The results of mailto:amos.guiora@law.utah.edu mailto:minutolo@rmu.edu mailto:lgvargas@pitt.edu mailto:mao74@pitt.edu mailto:zoffer@katz.pitt.edu IJAHP Article: Guiora, Minutolo, L. Vargas, M. Vargas, Zoffer/Enhancing police-community relations via a conflict resolution approach International Journal of the Analytic Hierarchy Process 2 Vol 15 Issue 1 2023 ISSN 1936-6744 https://doi.org/10.13033/ijahp.v15i1.1079 the meetings, the priorities generated, and similarities/divergences between them are presented. Keywords: AHP; conflict resolution; police–community relations negotiations 1. Introduction The relationship between the police and the community has gone through difficult times and been strained in the last few years making it difficult for both parties to reach their goals. In fact, some have claimed that police are “suffering a crisis of legitimacy” (Ali & Pirog, 2019, p. 411). Positive police-community relationships are essential to maintaining public safety and order and ensuring that communities thrive. These relationships help reduce fear and biases and build mutual understanding and trust between the police and the communities they serve. The importance of police-community relations to modern policing was first articulated with the “Nine Principles of Policing,” made famous by Sir Robert Peel and the London Metropolitan Police Department in 1829 (Lentz & Chaires, 2007). These principles are still widely accepted as the foundation for professional policing. Peel’s principles (DOJ, n.d.) emphasize that the police and the public (or community) are one and the same, and hence, they should cooperate at all levels. In fact, Robinson and Ramsey (2017) note that in order to resolve any tension between the police and the community, both parties need to co-produce safety through community-oriented policing. Further, McCarty (2015) states that community policing “encourages partnerships, problem solving, and prevention of crime” (p. 443). However, community policing could not be further from the current reality. Despite many calls by all branches of the criminal justice system and community representatives (see for example, BJA, 1994; Rohe et al., 1997; Schanzer et al., 2016) the relationship between police departments and some sectors of the community are strained. Ali and Pirog (2019) evaluated the efficacy of citizen oversight agencies as a social accountability mechanism; this is important, but oversight does not bridge the divide nor does it help one party understand the needs, perceptions, or priorities of the other. More than 20 years ago, Culberston (2000) noted the need for the public to understand the social complexity and divisive issues that plague the relationship between the police and community, yet the challenges have persisted if not grown. This article presents the results of a project that used a unique process of conflict resolution to help find out how police agencies (“Police”) and communities (“Community”) can better understand each other’s point of view, identify the barriers that prevent understanding, prioritize the reported factors of each party’s point of view as well as their perception of the point of view of the other party, and identify the areas of conflict that would be most promising to allocate resources to close the gap between their respective perceptions. 2. Literature review The initial goal of this project was to help the police and community more fully understand each other, so that the second stage of the project could use this understanding to contemplate measurable improvements in the basic relationship between the two IJAHP Article: Guiora, Minutolo, L. Vargas, M. Vargas, Zoffer/Enhancing police-community relations via a conflict resolution approach International Journal of the Analytic Hierarchy Process 3 Vol 15 Issue 1 2023 ISSN 1936-6744 https://doi.org/10.13033/ijahp.v15i1.1079 parties. This is consistent with the idea of conflict sensitivity (Hussein et al., 2019; Popovych, 2021; Robinson, 2021). Conflict sensitivity is the ability of an organization to: 1. Understand more completely the context in which it is operating, intergroup tensions and the “divisive” issues with a potential for conflict, and the “connecting” issues with the potential to mitigate conflict and strengthen social cohesion; 2. Understand the interaction between its intervention and that context; and 3. Act upon that understanding, in order to avoid unintentionally feeding into further division, and maximize the potential contribution to strengthen social cohesion and commitment to shared values. In order for both parties, the police and the community, to achieve conflict sensitivity they need to be open to “double-loop learning” and enable communication practices that allow them to evaluate both the suitability and efficacy of the politics and norms that guide them (Argyris & Schon, 1978; Cartwright, 2002). In the context of police and community relationships where social conflict is particularly high, double-loop learning is necessary to promote adaptiveness on both sides in order to shift the focus from zero- sum solution spaces to win-win spaces by optimizing the gains to both parties for the concessions made. To achieve such an end-state, there needs to be a process that facilitates “mutual responsiveness, reciprocity, and invitation to a new relationship” (Kelman, 2009, p. 182). The negotiators in this process must employ problem-solving tools that take both parties through a process that ensures double-loop learning and makes sure that both parties are committed to the process (Johnson & Johnson, 2005). Dissipating the tension and reaching a resolution requires that the mediator understands the complexity of the environment. To accomplish this, the mediator needs to gain a depth of understanding of the relationship between and within the parties. They must know the way that “material, attitudinal, cognitive, and perceptual factors contribute to the development of a cooperative and competitive relationship between the parties” (Hussein et al., 2019, pp. 25-26). To this end, this article presents an approach that takes each party through a process where these factors are developed and the intensity of the various attributes are elucidated in order to reach a mutually beneficial set of resolutions. 3. Methods The first task that needed to be undertaken was to understand the context in which the police and the community are operating. This task required that each party, separately, identified their goals, objectives, and actions in society and prioritized the importance of each element from their own point of view. The prioritization was based on a process called the Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) approach, which has a proven record of providing solutions for complex and difficult problems where each side shares as equally as possible in modifying their initial commitments (e.g., Minutolo et al., 2022, Vargas et al., 2021). Prior to understanding the context, it was necessary to find potential members from each party to participate in focus group sessions wherein the goals, objectives, and actions were developed. The participants needed to be people who were prepared to negotiate all issues and allow the process to seek solutions that are equitable for each side to be IJAHP Article: Guiora, Minutolo, L. Vargas, M. Vargas, Zoffer/Enhancing police-community relations via a conflict resolution approach International Journal of the Analytic Hierarchy Process 4 Vol 15 Issue 1 2023 ISSN 1936-6744 https://doi.org/10.13033/ijahp.v15i1.1079 developed. The people selected for each group needed to be open minded, progressive thinkers, and open to reconsidering even their most deeply-held values. The participants in this project were selected using personal interviews in which we addressed the following issues:  Total commitment: Participants must begin with a total commitment to the goal of the enterprise, namely, to recognize the importance of improving the relationship between the people of the community involved and the police force of their region.  No prior expectations or demands: Participants must be willing to allow the process they are engaged in to operate without prior expectations or demands or initially ruling out any procedures. They need to understand that the process itself will address and evaluate even deeply held positions.  Mutual respect: Participants need to understand that the process depends on developing mutual respect between participants from both parties. While there will inevitably be significant differences in opinion, the participants must be prepared to listen to different positions, no matter how unacceptable they seem, and recognize the positions of the other side without expressing strong emotional reactions.  Strength of personal commitments: Participants will use a 1-9 scale to indicate the strength of their personal commitment to one approach or another and to express their judgment as to their priorities. The scale will be used to measure the intensity of preference of one item over another item.  Acceptance of opposing views: Participants need to be prepared to offer their judgments on actions proposed by either party, and allow the positions to be considered, even if they are inherently opposed to them, understanding that the process itself will allow them to express their opposition.  The process yields balanced tradeoffs: The process is directed to measure benefits and costs, and allow each party to see that it yields gains for each group as close to equality as possible, so that the concluding recommendations can be mathematically shown to the participants to provide a win-win situation where neither side has a significant advantage.  The process yields fair tradeoffs: Participants need to be prepared to recognize that inevitable disagreements are considered in a trade-off process that allows concessions to be measured and yields an outcome which is as fair as possible for each party. We selected seven members of each group, the community and the police, to conduct the study described. Each group was brought together separately to elicit goals, objectives, and actions. Each group was introduced to the AHP process and conducted a brainstorming session. An approximately hour-long introduction to the Analytic Hierarchy Process was provided to each group wherein we provided examples of uses of the AHP in conflict analysis. IJAHP Article: Guiora, Minutolo, L. Vargas, M. Vargas, Zoffer/Enhancing police-community relations via a conflict resolution approach International Journal of the Analytic Hierarchy Process 5 Vol 15 Issue 1 2023 ISSN 1936-6744 https://doi.org/10.13033/ijahp.v15i1.1079 In their session, the police group developed the following list of their perceived objectives of policing (what they think they ought to be doing): 1. Reduce crime 2. Public safety 3. First responder 4. Investigate crimes 5. Enforce the law 6. Problem solve with the public 7. Build a relationship with the community 8. Be a role model 9. Educate the community The objectives were grouped into three broad categories of criteria as follows: protect, educate and serve. Together, the criteria are the activities that the police engage in to achieve the strategic criteria of cooperation, public approval, and building trust. Note that some of the objectives fall into multiple categories. The objectives First responder and Public safety, for instance, were classified into the categories protect and serve. The hierarchical model developed out of this process is represented in Figure 1. Purpose: Understand the role of policing Cooperation Public Approval Trust Protect Educate Serve  Reduce crime  Public safety  First responder  Investigate crimes  Enforce the law  Public safety  Problem solve w/ public  Build relationships w/ community  Be a role model  First responder  Educate the community Figure 1 Hierarchy of police objectives The community group consisted of six individuals from the same neighborhood that the police group serves; one individual withdrew. The group had two points of view with respect to the police objectives. The community group differentiated between policing (Figure 2) and service (Figure 3). Policing for this group represents the perception of the police of their activities. With respect to the community that we focused on, police officers working in the police department are not required to live in the city. The community had two thoughts about the police state of mind as a result of not living in the city. The first thought is that they do not live in the neighborhood where they serve and as IJAHP Article: Guiora, Minutolo, L. Vargas, M. Vargas, Zoffer/Enhancing police-community relations via a conflict resolution approach International Journal of the Analytic Hierarchy Process 6 Vol 15 Issue 1 2023 ISSN 1936-6744 https://doi.org/10.13033/ijahp.v15i1.1079 such have no connection with the community. The second is that the police believe that low-income communities are considered less worthy than others and as such not as deserving as other communities. These two ideas seemed to shape community’s thoughts about police behavior in those communities. Thus, the community group thinks that the police work on the assumption or presupposition that criminal behavior is taking place in those communities. Based on these thoughts, the community group believes that the police appear to have the following objectives: 1. Catch people assumed to be breaking the law (according to the community, the police call this “enforcing the law”) 2. Make arrests under the assumption of safety/security 3. Maintain control of the community (community labels this a “power and fear policy”) 4. Protect city and commercial property because they are considered more valuable since they produce revenue in terms of taxes 5. Police in the strictest meaning of the word – “the activities carried out by police officers in order to preserve law and order” 6. Seizures 7. Quotas 8. Compliance with the law The community hierarchy presented in Figure 2 illustrates the perception of policing by the community. According to the perception of the community, the funding criteria captures points 4, 6, and 7 above while the control criteria captures 1, 2, 3, and 8. Point 5 above is captured as the goal of the overall hierarchy. Policing Funding Control  Protection of City & Commercial Property  Seizures  Quotas  Enforcing the law  Arrests  Power and fear  Compliance Figure 2 Policing hierarchy (perception of community) The second point of view is based on the idea that police should serve the community. They call this point of view “service” (everybody should be treated equal – equality). IJAHP Article: Guiora, Minutolo, L. Vargas, M. Vargas, Zoffer/Enhancing police-community relations via a conflict resolution approach International Journal of the Analytic Hierarchy Process 7 Vol 15 Issue 1 2023 ISSN 1936-6744 https://doi.org/10.13033/ijahp.v15i1.1079 According to the community participants, “service” is represented by the following elements: 1. Neighborhood representation 2. Communication skills 3. Advocacy for the community 4. Diversion 5. Demilitarization 6. Redefine the activity as public safety rather than policing 7. Harm reduction 8. Funding transparency 9. Proper behavioral health training with accountability Service Community Administration Care / People  Neighborhood representation  Advocacy for the community  Demilitarization  Redefine public safety  Funding transparency  Communication skills  Diversion  Harm reduction  Behavioral health training Figure 3 Service hierarchy (perception of community) The service hierarchy is captured in Figure 3. The activities presented in the list above are divided into community, administration, and care/people or the social dimension. The objectives fit into these categories as follows: community (objectives 1 and 3), administration (objectives 5, 6 and 8) and care/people (objectives 2, 4, 7 and 9). This approach resembles Harris’ (2015) proposal of the “10 characteristics of a well-run police operation.” Harris’ (2015) ten characteristics include partnership, identifying with the community, focused deterrence against violence, modern use-of-force policy, bias- free policing, early intervention systems, citizen complaint system, independent external oversight, critical incident review, and policies made public. In fact, much of what both parties pointed to is similar to what others have to say on the subject. According to the American Bar Association (ABA, 2018), the major responsibilities of police are as follows: a. Identify criminal offenders and criminal activity and, where appropriate, to apprehend offenders and participate in subsequent court proceedings; b. Reduce the opportunities for the commission of some crimes through preventive patrol and other measures; c. Aid individuals who are in danger of physical harm; d. Protect constitutional guarantees; e. Facilitate the movement of people and vehicles; IJAHP Article: Guiora, Minutolo, L. Vargas, M. Vargas, Zoffer/Enhancing police-community relations via a conflict resolution approach International Journal of the Analytic Hierarchy Process 8 Vol 15 Issue 1 2023 ISSN 1936-6744 https://doi.org/10.13033/ijahp.v15i1.1079 f. Assist those who cannot care for themselves; g. Resolve conflict; h. Identify problems that are potentially serious law enforcement or governmental problems; i. Create and maintain a feeling of security in the community; j. Promote and preserve civil order; and k. Provide other services on an emergency basis. These responsibilities are guided by principles that should be inherent in a democratic society, which are to:  Safeguard freedom, preserve life and property, protect the constitutional rights of citizens and maintain respect for the rule of law;  Provide maximum opportunity for achieving desired social change by freely available, lawful, and orderly means;  Give emphasis to those social and behavioral problems which may require the use of force or the use of special investigative abilities which the police possess, and  Firmly establish the principle that the police should be restricted to using the amount of force reasonably necessary in responding to any situation. The next task in the process was the prioritization of the other party’s perceptions. Each party prioritized their perception of the importance the other party gives to their goals, objectives, and actions. The result of the two tasks produced priorities for each party’s own goals, objectives and actions and the perceived priorities of the other party’s goals, objectives, and actions. To accomplish this, the following items needed to take place; first, group prioritization and avoidance of groupthink; second, synthesis of group priorities of goals, objectives and actions using the AHP; and, finally, the interpretation of the priorities. The priorities developed in the first two tasks were used to identify “divisive” and “connecting” issues. The priorities were used to identify agreements and disagreements between the groups. Finally, we were able to use the priorities to arrive at an agreement. The Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) is a theory based on relative measurement implemented using pairwise comparisons. Suppose that we want to assign priorities to n activities or objectives, some of which may not be measurable (i.e., they are intangible), and others may be measured in different scales for different criteria. To simplify the exposition, assume that we have a criterion in mind (e.g., “importance”). The aim is to determine how important the alternatives or objectives are toward achieving the desired goal. Importance could be a conglomerate of criteria, but to make it simple, assume that it is a single criterion. Select a pair of alternatives, A and B, and ask the questions, “which alternative is more important?”, and “how much more important is one than the other?” To express the degree of importance, one could use words, but words cannot be processed mathematically unless they are translated into numbers. Hence, Thomas L. Saaty (1980) developed the scale given in Table 1 that assigns numbers 1, 3, 5, 7, and 9 to words such as equal, moderate, strong, very strong, and extreme, respectively. The numbers 2, 4, 6 and 8 are used for compromises. The AHP is particularly useful for group decision making because it helps reach consensus and avoid groupthink (Aczél & Saaty, IJAHP Article: Guiora, Minutolo, L. Vargas, M. Vargas, Zoffer/Enhancing police-community relations via a conflict resolution approach International Journal of the Analytic Hierarchy Process 9 Vol 15 Issue 1 2023 ISSN 1936-6744 https://doi.org/10.13033/ijahp.v15i1.1079 1983; Saaty & Vargas, 2007), and satisfies Arrow’s conditions of unrestricted domain, Pareto’s principle, independence from irrelevant alternatives, and non-dictatorship (Saaty & Vargas, 2003). Table 1 Fundamental scale Intensity of Importance Definition Explanation 1 Equal Importance Two activities contribute equally to the objective 3 Moderate importance Experience and judgment slightly favor one activity over another 5 Strong importance Experience and judgment strongly favor one activity over another 7 Very strong or demonstrated importance An activity is favored very strongly over another; its dominance demonstrated in practice 9 Extreme importance The evidence favoring one activity over another is of the highest possible order of affirmation 2, 4, 6, 8 Reciprocals of above Intermediate values between the two adjacent judgments If activity i has one of the above nonzero numbers assigned to it when compared with activity j, then j has the reciprocal value when compared with i When compromise is needed Rationals Ratios arising from the scale If consistency were to be forced by obtaining n numerical values to span the matrix To develop a relative scale of priorities, pairwise comparisons are used. The numerical comparisons are arranged in a matrix whose entries satisfy the reciprocal property wherein if alternative Ai is preferred to alternative Aj with an intensity aij>1, then Aj is 1/aij times preferred to alternative Ai. Arranging the pairwise comparisons in a matrix A such as the one given: 𝐴 = 𝐴1 𝐴2 … 𝐴𝑛 𝐴1 𝐴2 ⋮ 𝐴𝑛 [ 1 1/𝑎12 𝑎12 1 ⋯ 𝑎1𝑛 𝑎2𝑛 ⋮ ⋱ ⋮ 1/𝑎1𝑛 1/𝑎2𝑛 ⋯ 1 ] IJAHP Article: Guiora, Minutolo, L. Vargas, M. Vargas, Zoffer/Enhancing police-community relations via a conflict resolution approach International Journal of the Analytic Hierarchy Process 10 Vol 15 Issue 1 2023 ISSN 1936-6744 https://doi.org/10.13033/ijahp.v15i1.1079 we have what is known as a positive reciprocal matrix. If the entries of the matrix satisfy the property 𝑎𝑖𝑘 = 𝑎𝑖𝑗𝑎𝑗𝑘 for all i, j and k, the matrix is said to be consistent. For consistent matrices, the underlying priorities of the alternatives 𝑤 = (𝑤1,𝑤2,…, 𝑤𝑛) are given by any column of the matrix A. Normalizing them to unity, the sum equals 1, all the columns yield the same vector of priorities, and the entries of the matrix are given by 𝑎𝑖𝑗 = 𝑤𝑖 𝑤𝑗 . In this case, it can be easily shown that 𝐴𝑤 = 𝑛𝑤. When the matrix is not consistent, the principal eigenvalue model is used to derive the priorities. The assumption is that the entries of matrix A are multiplicative perturbations of the ratios of the priorities given by 𝑤𝑖 𝑤𝑗 𝜀𝑖𝑗. In this case, we solve the eigenvalue problem 𝐴𝑤 = 𝜆𝑚𝑎𝑥𝑤, where 𝜆𝑚𝑎𝑥 is the largest real eigenvalue of matrix A. The resulting vector of priorities 𝑤 is unique to within a multiplicative constant. Because we normalize to unity (the 𝑙1 − 𝑛𝑜𝑟𝑚), the scale produced is a relative ratio scale. It has no units of measurement, and hence, we can measure the importance of intangibles with relative measurement. The AHP is necessary because human relationships involve intangibles, and decisions are usually made in groups. Thus, relative measurement can help us understand perceptions of groups expressed in terms of intangibles. Groups usually make decisions by consensus. In the AHP, each member of a group provides judgments for the pairwise comparisons. Assume that a group wants to select a location for a company to relocate, then the group needs to agree on the final location. There are multiple criteria required to make the decision, and consensus will need to be attained before deciding. One way of helping to achieve consensus is by combining the paired comparison judgments of the members of the group using the geometric mean. Saaty and Aczel (1983) proved that the only aggregation procedure f that satisfies:  separability: 𝑓(𝑥1,…,𝑥𝑚) = 𝑔(𝑥1) ∘ ⋯∘ 𝑔(𝑥𝑚),  unanimity: 𝑓(𝑥1,… ,𝑥𝑚) = 𝑥,  homogeneity: 𝑓(𝜆𝑥1,…,𝜆𝑥𝑚) = 𝜆𝑓(𝑥1,…,𝑥𝑚),𝜆 > 0, and  the reciprocal property: 𝑓(1/𝑥1,…,1/𝑥𝑚) = 1/𝑓(𝑥1,…,𝑥𝑚), is the geometric mean. Separability assumes that each of the individual judgements of the participants can be separated. Unanimity assumes that if all judgements have the same value, then the synthesized judgements should have the same value. Homogeneity implies that if each individual judges a second ratio to be x times as large as a first ratio, then the synthesized judgement on the second should be x times as large as that on the first. Finally, the reciprocal property assumes that if one were to synthesize the reciprocals of 𝑥1,… ,𝑥𝑚, it would lead to the reciprocal of 𝑓(𝑥1,… ,𝑥𝑚). The geometric mean of the judgments from a group of m decision makers {𝑎𝑖𝑗 𝑘 }, where k represents the kth decision maker, and i and j are the alternatives being compared, is given by: 𝑓(𝑎𝑖𝑗 1 ,𝑎𝑖𝑗 2 ,…,𝑎𝑖𝑗 𝑚) = ∏ 𝑎𝑖𝑗 𝑘𝑚 𝑘=1 (1) The question is “when does the geometric mean represent the judgment of the group?” An issue that needs to be addressed here is the dispersion of the judgments. When does the geometric mean of judgments represent the group judgment? Saaty and Vargas (2007) IJAHP Article: Guiora, Minutolo, L. Vargas, M. Vargas, Zoffer/Enhancing police-community relations via a conflict resolution approach International Journal of the Analytic Hierarchy Process 11 Vol 15 Issue 1 2023 ISSN 1936-6744 https://doi.org/10.13033/ijahp.v15i1.1079 showed that group judgments are too dispersed to represent the group if we cannot reject the null hypothesis of a statistical test based on the concept of geometric dispersion. Geometric dispersion is measured by the geometric variance, a concept introduced to study the variance of judgments elicited in Saaty’s scale (Saaty & Vargas 2007). This scale has positive values and the reciprocal of each positive value. Thus, if we have two judgments, a and 1/a, the average is not the arithmetic mean, but the geometric mean, because a and 1/a are equidistant from 1 in the multiplicative sense. Hence, the arithmetic mean could not be used in the traditional definition of the variance which is for interval scales which admit positive and negative numbers. Saaty and Vargas (2007) showed how to approximate the probability distribution of the geometric variance of a set of judgments to perform a statistical test about the geometric variance. Using the geometric mean as a group aggregation procedure provides two benefits (a) avoidance of the groupthink effect; and, (b) compliance with the conditions of Arrow’s Impossibility Theorem (Saaty & Vargas 2012). The police-community project used group judgments based on the principles explained above. 4. Results To measure how the goals and objectives were achieved, we needed to first measure the relative importance of the goals and objectives. In the context of the police-community project, the goal for both parties is to evaluate the effectiveness of policing. As stated earlier, it is not enough for one party or the other to state how effective they think the police are at achieving this goal, but rather it is necessary to capture the perception that each party has with respect to this goal given the context of the strategic criteria they have. 4.1. Priorities from the police group The police group consisting of seven individuals had over 100 years of combined experience. Following the guidelines provided above, the group developed the hierarchy presented in Figure 1. They identified three strategic criteria of the police including cooperation, public approval, and trust. Cooperation was defined by the group as working with the community. Public approval is the degree to which the public approves of the work that they are doing in the community. Finally, trust is a measure of the degree to which the community believes that the police have their best interest in mind and execute their duties in good faith. These strategic criteria were prioritized as follows in Table 3: Table 3 Global priorities for police group Goals Cooperation Public Approval Trust Priorities Cooperation 1 7 5 0.7015 Public approval 1/7 1 1/7 0.0586 Trust 1/5 7 1 0.2399 IJAHP Article: Guiora, Minutolo, L. Vargas, M. Vargas, Zoffer/Enhancing police-community relations via a conflict resolution approach International Journal of the Analytic Hierarchy Process 12 Vol 15 Issue 1 2023 ISSN 1936-6744 https://doi.org/10.13033/ijahp.v15i1.1079 These objectives were prioritized under the strategic criteria of cooperation, public approval and trust. It is interesting to note that not all of the participants agreed with respect to the judgements and in some cases, disagreed not only with the weighting but also with respect to what was most important. Finally, the objectives were prioritized with respect to the goals within each of the categories. Table 3 provides the results of the strategic criteria and the composite priorities; Table 4 shows the priorities of the objectives’ categories; and, Table 5 provides the results of the priorities of the activities that the police engage in with respect to the strategic objectives. As seen in Table 4, serving the community is seen as the most important activity when it comes to cooperation (0.43), public approval (0.42), and trust (0.48). Table 4 Priorities of objectives’ categories Cooperation Public Approval Trust Protect 0.374 0.369 0.21 Educate 0.197 0.208 0.310 Serve 0.429 0.422 0.48 Table 5 Priorities of goals and objectives Priorities of goals -> 0.7015 0.0586 0.2399 Overall Cooperation Public approval Trust Priorities Reduce crime 0.0559 0.2058 0.036 0.0599 Public safety 0.2414 0.1912 0.1923 0.2267 First responder 0.2525 0.1174 0.1698 0.2247 Investigate crimes 0.0901 0.1715 0.0902 0.0949 Enforce the law 0.1074 0.0368 0.2202 0.1303 Problem solve with public 0.0579 0.0659 0.07 0.0613 Build relationship with community 0.0944 0.1168 0.1386 0.1063 Be a role model 0.0324 0.0287 0.0257 0.0306 Educate the community 0.068 0.0659 0.0572 0.0653 As illustrated by the priorities in Table 5, the police group sees itself as providing public safety (0.2267), acting as first responders (0.2247), enforcing the law (0.1303), and trying to build relationships with the community (0.1063). These objectives account for 69 percent of the total priority. We will focus on these objectives when developing programs to attain them. IJAHP Article: Guiora, Minutolo, L. Vargas, M. Vargas, Zoffer/Enhancing police-community relations via a conflict resolution approach International Journal of the Analytic Hierarchy Process 13 Vol 15 Issue 1 2023 ISSN 1936-6744 https://doi.org/10.13033/ijahp.v15i1.1079 4.2. Priorities from the community group The community priorities for the point of view policing are given in Table 6 and those of service can be found in Table 7. Table 6 Priorities of policing point of view Priorities of goals 0.75 0.25 Overall Control Funding Priorities 1 Enforcing the law 0.20 0.146 2 Arrests 0.19 0.142 3 Power and fear 0.39 0.289 4 Protection of city and commercial property 0.13 0.033 6 Seizures 0.20 0.051 7 Quotas 0.67 0.167 8 Compliance 0.23 0.173 Table 7 Global priorities of service point of view Priorities of goals 0.315 0.123 0.563 Overall Community Administration Care/People Priorities 1 Neighborhood representation 0.36 0.113 2 Communication skills 0.18 0.101 3 Advocacy for the community 0.64 0.202 4 Diversion 0.3 0.169 5 Demilitarization 0.32 0.039 6 Redefine public safety vs. policing 0.43 0.053 7 Harm reduction 0.3 0.168 8 Funding transparency 0.25 0.031 9 Proper behavioral health training with accountability 0.22 0.124 Note that the community’s desired objectives of the police, from the point of view of service, are not far from those described in Harris (2015). Their similarity can be observed by putting them side-by-side as in Table 8. IJAHP Article: Guiora, Minutolo, L. Vargas, M. Vargas, Zoffer/Enhancing police-community relations via a conflict resolution approach International Journal of the Analytic Hierarchy Process 14 Vol 15 Issue 1 2023 ISSN 1936-6744 https://doi.org/10.13033/ijahp.v15i1.1079 Table 8 Side-by-side comparisons of Harris’ and the Community’s objectives Harris' Objectives Community's Objectives Community Priorities  Partnership  Neighborhood representation 0.113  Identifying with the community  Advocacy for the community 0.202 Administration  An open and accessible citizen complaint process  Demilitarization 0.039  Independent external oversight  Redefine public safety vs. policing 0.053  Critical incident review  Funding transparency 0.031  Policies made public Care/People  Focused deterrence against violence  Communication skills 0.101  A modern use-of-force policy  Diversion 0.169  Bias-free policing  Harm reduction 0.168  Early Intervention Systems  Proper behavioral health training with accountability 0.124 Next, each party identified the actions needed to implement their objectives. For example, what do the police do now to reduce crime? From the community perspective, what does the community think that the police should do to enhance advocacy for the community? The actions needed to implement their objectives are called concessions in this context since they represent what each party wants from the other and may be able to provide as a means to reconcile the tensions between the two. 4.3. Concessions – Demands of one party from the other In 2014, COPS-Community Oriented Policing Services, Department of Justice (Palladian Partners, Inc., 2014) held a meeting in which they drafted guidelines for “Strengthening the Relationship between Law Enforcement and Communities of Color.” They divided the action items into the following four types: police operations, building relationships between the police and the community, the role of law enforcement, and the role of the community. Under police operations, the police are responsible to: IJAHP Article: Guiora, Minutolo, L. Vargas, M. Vargas, Zoffer/Enhancing police-community relations via a conflict resolution approach International Journal of the Analytic Hierarchy Process 15 Vol 15 Issue 1 2023 ISSN 1936-6744 https://doi.org/10.13033/ijahp.v15i1.1079 1. Hire with a focus on recruitment and promotions on procedural justice; 2. Train and promote police legitimacy from recruits to the command staff level; and 3. Implement geographic accountability. In building relationships between the police and the community, the police are responsible for: 1. Building relationships; 2. Improving communication; 3. Rethinking training; 4. Recognizing the power of race; 5. Understanding young people; 6. Learning about diverse communities; 7. Developing community policing; and 8. Offering leadership. In the role of law enforcement, the police are responsible to: 1. Inform about truth telling to encourage transparency; 2. Divert good people out of the criminal justice system; 3. Create constitutional policing methods; eliminate stop and frisk as a tactic; 4. Engage the community frequently; actively encourage and develop feedback mechanisms from all segments of the community; and 5. Collaborate on public safety issues with city agencies, business, nonprofits, and community organizations. The role of the community in this process includes: 1. Identifying leaders within the community; 2. Reclaiming ownership of the public space; 3. Coming outside of the four walls of the church (including faith-based leaders); 4. Acknowledging the historical stereotypes; and 5. Learning the cultural differences within the Latino community to engage them appropriately. The COPS’ results are very similar to the results from our workshops with the two groups. Based on the priorities obtained from the community group from the service point of view, the community group developed action items of community advocacy, diversion, harm reduction, and proper behavioral health training with accountability. The action items are suggestions for how the police might achieve the criteria that can then be prioritized. Some of the items include actions like wearing plain clothes to community events, open town hall meetings at secular locations, and getting to know the community. In sum, the community wants community advocacy (20%), diversion (17%), harm reduction (17%), and proper behavioral health training and accountability (12%). The perception of the community about the objectives of the police are that the police are concerned with controlling through power and fear (0.29), fulfilling quotas (0.17), IJAHP Article: Guiora, Minutolo, L. Vargas, M. Vargas, Zoffer/Enhancing police-community relations via a conflict resolution approach International Journal of the Analytic Hierarchy Process 16 Vol 15 Issue 1 2023 ISSN 1936-6744 https://doi.org/10.13033/ijahp.v15i1.1079 ensuring compliance (0.17), enforcing the law (0.15), and making arrests (0.14). Whereas the police group says that they provide public safety programs (0.023), first responder programs (0.23), enforce the law (0.13), and build relationships with the community (0.11). 5. Discussion While the community leaders articulated opposition to the concept of “defund the police,” they similarly articulated a distinctly different perception of police goals from those voiced by police participants. There is an important subtlety in the distinction. The community leaders understand the need for law enforcement and recognize the threat posed to their community by criminal elements. In that sense, there is – perhaps – an unspoken possibility for an alliance. However, as the data we gathered highlights, the community’s perception of law enforcement’s behavior is distinct from its expectations of police behavior. There is clear symmetry between law enforcement self-perception and the community’s expectations, but a corresponding lack of symmetry between the community’s expectations and its perception of law enforcement. Closing that gap must come from within the groups. The easiest step could be in how police officers are trained to interact with the community. Uniform training in police academies is easier to implement than changing community’s perceptions without facts at hand. Despite the differences between the two groups, a great deal of advancement was made during the process. The use of the Analytic Hierarchy Process as an approach to bridge the divide between the two groups served several purposes. First, the process solicited the expectations for a desired goal and the corresponding criteria against which they evaluate how well some alternative is or is not achieving the desired outcome from the perspective of each group. The AHP approach allowed each party to articulate their perception of what the other party wants and how they think the other party evaluates alternatives. One aspect of the approach that is particularly useful is that it provides each party with a scale to see the intensity of priorities of the other party as well as articulate each other’s perception of the intensity with which elements are valued. This process gave both the police and community participants a sense of the perceptions of the other which they did not have prior to the meeting. 6. Future work and conclusions While the community developed a set of action items for the police to take to achieve the community’s goals, steps still need to be developed for the police to enhance relations with the community, as well as determining what the community should do to make sure the police are doing what they say they are doing, in other words, to enhance mutual trust. One natural extension of this project is to conduct similar workshops in other communities. Not all communities or police organizations will prioritize the goals and objectives in the same way, or even have the same goals and objectives. Communities and the police that serve them are very distinct and any attempt to set priorities ought to be localized. However, we have presented an approach to open a dialogue between police and their communities to develop an understanding of how each party perceives what it IJAHP Article: Guiora, Minutolo, L. Vargas, M. Vargas, Zoffer/Enhancing police-community relations via a conflict resolution approach International Journal of the Analytic Hierarchy Process 17 Vol 15 Issue 1 2023 ISSN 1936-6744 https://doi.org/10.13033/ijahp.v15i1.1079 needs and wants along with the corresponding priorities There is a need to validate these findings in other communities to gather more data to convince the police of the need to change the existing training models. The lack of symmetry in perceptions highlighted in this study demonstrates that law enforcement and the community, although believing they speak the same language, do not. The data compellingly demonstrates an unbridgeable dissonance, a lack of recognition of this dissonance, and the need to proactively change the existing police training model. IJAHP Article: Guiora, Minutolo, L. Vargas, M. 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