In 2001, police in Gothenburg, Sweden, shot three anti-EU protestors, one of whom died. Swedish citizens were horrified, and in response the Dialogue Police, a small unit within the Swedish police, was created to prevent violence and uphold the rights of freedom of expression and freedom to demonstrate, both guaranteed under the Swedish constitution. Their method is to resolve conflicts through negotiation and to seek compromise rather than domination.
Had American police departments responded in kind to any number of police-caused civilian deaths, a whole lot more people would be alive today. But a more typical response in the United States to a police killing is to lie, stonewall, and perhaps pay millions in a court-ordered settlement years later, without taking action to prevent further deaths.* Which method do you think is more useful in terms of both protecting public safety and ensuring people’s rights to express themselves? To say nothing of representing a wise use of public funds?
Susanna Edwards’ documentary The Dialogue Police offers a verité-style behind-the-scenes look at how the Swedish Dialogue Police operate. As is the case with many jobs, it’s not all exciting—in the office, there’s a lot of planning and meeting, and at demonstrations, and at the demonstrations, a lot of time is spent talking to people and trying to resolve conflicts and prevent violence. In other words, it’s the exact opposite of the way policing is often presented in action movies and television shows, which emphasize drama through means like car chases and bullets flying.
As one of the unit members states early in this film, in Sweden everyone has the right to express themselves, whether it’s in opposition of vaccines or in favor of saving the environment or supporting or opposing the Nazi party. There are limits, however, and protestors are warned if they’re doing something that could get them arrested. Sometimes that’s all that is required for them to disperse—they wanted to make their point, were allowed to do so, and are willing to move on and let other people do what they need to do. If that doesn’t happen, at some point there may be arrests, but without unnecessary violence, because the point is to remove the obstruction not punish the demonstrators for expressing their allegiance to a cause.
Above all, The Dialogue Police is a film about negotiation. There’s no fixed answer as to how long a demonstration should be allowed to block traffic at a busy intersection, for instance, and the right of the demonstrators has to be balanced against the rights of everyone else to get where they’re going using public streets. Members of the dialogue unit are also constantly talking to each other, so they’re clear about what’s happening and what the plan is going forward.
It’s not just demonstrators that the Dialogue Police have to worry about. As we have seen recently in St. Louis (and many other times both here and elsewhere), sometimes people who feel inconvenienced by a demonstration get violent, which is a particular problem if they’re behind the wheel of a car, a.k.a. operating a deadly weapon. Calming such people (who also have the right to be heard) and preventing them from hurting others is part of the job. Handling such situations is not always simple, but good training and a focus on keeping the peace certainly helps, as does a calm disposition and trust in one’s fellow unit members.
The overriding message of The Dialogue Police is that if people are willing to use their intelligence and empathy to engage in dialogue with others, rather than resorting immediately to violence, often conflicts can be resolved without anyone getting hurt. It’s a message I hope would be embraced by more Americans, whether they work in a police department or not. | Sarah Boslaugh
*If you’re interested in how many people are killed by American police each year, there are no official statistics, but several organizations collect and publish this data and some also include international comparisons. These include the Law Enforcement Epidemiology Project published by the University of Illinois Chicago’s Department of Public Health, Mapping Police Violence, and the Prison Policy Initiative.
The Dialogue Police is available on streaming from multiple sources, including Icarus Films on Demand.
