An initiative of the National Academy of Public Administration, and the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs and the Bobst Center for Peace and Justice, Princeton University Oral History Program Series: Policing Interview no.: L3 Interviewee: Julie Fleming Interviewer: Arthur Boutellis Date of Interview: July 25, 2008 Location: OSCE Pri?tina Kosovo Innovations for Successful Societies, Bobst Center for Peace and Justice Princeton University, 83 Prospect Avenue, Princeton, New Jersey, 08544, USA www.princeton.edu/successfulsocieties BOUTELLIS: Today is the 25th of July 2008 and I am now sitting with Julie Fleming who is an independent contractor/consultant for the bilaterally funded Community Safety Program for the Community Safety Development Section of the OSCE Department for Public Safety and the US Department of Justice/ICITAP, the International Criminal Investigative Training Assistance Program in Pri?tina, Kosovo. We are today in the restaurant of the top floor of the OSCE (Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe) main office in Pri?tina, Kosovo. First, thank you for your time and before we start the interview I'd like you to confirm that you have given your consent to the interview. FLEMING: Yes I have. BOUTELLIS: I'd like to start the interview by learning more about your personal background in policing and how did you get involved in overseas policing? FLEMING: I began my law enforcement career in 1985 with the San Diego Police Department in California in the United States. I was there seven years and then moved to Oregon and became a police officer in Grants Pass, Oregon. I was there another seven years. I was promoted to Captain and began working for the Oregon Department of Public Safety Standards and Training which is a public safety academy in Monmouth, Oregon. I then became a police consultant and traveled in the United States working with law enforcement agencies in their communities to help to improve their relations and their cooperation. During that time I was always a law enforcement trainer most of my career, basic levels up to the top executive levels, both in the academy setting and in law enforcement agency and community settings. Throughout my whole career, my experience and expertise, my primary focus was in the area of community policing: the philosophy of the police, communities and local governments working together to identify and address issues of crime, safety, livability, and security. I also was a program manager for one of the United States' Regional Community Policing Institutes called the Western Community Policing Center, also in Oregon. I traveled six western states assisting law enforcement agencies in their community policing implementation and training and capacity building. As such I was invited to come to Kosovo in 2003 with a team of community policing experts to implement a similar program in Kosovo that we had successfully implemented throughout the United States. There we called it "community teams," here we call it Community Safety Action Teams (CSATs), which is a name that the Kosovo people actually created for themselves. The idea was, Mr. Steve Bennett who was the Director of the Kosovo Police Service School at the time had just created the 7000 strong Kosovo Police Service and trained them in democratic policing. But he had a vision to really show the police officers in Kosovo what democratic policing looks like in practical application, in the communities, on the ground, in the neighborhoods. He knew from his experience in Oregon, that one of the best ways to do that is through the philosophy of community policing. So he invited this team to come to Kosovo and to develop a program to bring the officers more closely together with their communities and their local governments. BOUTELLIS: Was this an international team or was it composed only of US officers? FLEMING: Mostly US officers. It was funded by the US Department of Justice, ICITAP. We developed and started working a pilot program in four municipalities to create teams of police officers, community leaders and municipal officials to be able to work together cooperatively, democratically to reduce crime and increase safety through proactive problem solving, prevention, working in partnership. That's what brought me to Kosovo and that's primarily my law enforcement career up to the point of coming to Kosovo. There is a lot of work that has been done from then to now. BOUTELLIS: How big was the team originally? FLEMING: There were five of us, one team leader who was a civilian, and four community policing law enforcement professionals. Two of them were Chiefs of Police, one was a retired Deputy Chief, and then me. BOUTELLIS: So that was the pilot program. How long did this last? FLEMING: The original pilot lasted 9-weeks, but it has now become a hugely successful and comprehensive community safety program since 2003 with a lot of components. BOUTELLIS: But to start back then the four municipalities, how were they selected and how was the program designed and implemented at the time? FLEMING: I'll get you some electronic information to help fill in the gaps, but what we did we chose communities with specific criteria. They had to agree to work cooperatively together, the police and the municipality, and the municipality and police together with their community. They were required to work with their minorities, women, NGOs, youth collaboratively. They would be considered a future model for other agencies so they had to be ethical and be run democratically. They needed to not already have taken in so many resources from the international community because we wanted this really to be a grassroots effort, something that could be built from the ground level up. These four communities, [names the four cities: Fushe Kosove/Kosovo Polje, Gjakova/Dakovica, Vushtrri/Vucitrn and Novo Berdo/Novo Brdotr were the first four. EachCcommunity Safety Action Team, now called CSATs, was created in the community. We started by the community selection. Once we selected the community, we met with the Municipal Mayors and the KPS Station Commanders, showed them about the project, the importance of the project, what were the goals and objectives of the project. Once we got their buy-in then we put together a recruitment committee representing police, municipal leader, community leader and minority leader to recruit for their CSATs team. They recruited in their areas of responsibility, community leaders. So the municipal recruiter would recruit from the municipality. It could be Directors of Emergency Services, Directors of Social Welfare, Director of Schools, anyone that was related to community safety, but they needed to be leaders. They needed to already have some proven success as leaders and impact on community safety issues. The community leader would identify community leaders. So it could be business owners, it could be NGO leaders, it could be clergy, media, journalists, people who were already working within the realm of community safety and wanting to make a difference in their society. This was post conflict society so this very democratic, grass roots approach was brand new and we needed people that had an innate sense of empowerment and democracy and being proactive. Then the police recruiter would of course recruit the police officers. Generally there would be community policing officers, patrol officers, detectives, first line supervisors. In some cases there were higher-ranking officers but mostly they were street officers involved. Then the minority leader would make sure that the team represented the diversity of their community. So if you had 10% minorities, then your team had to have 10% minorities on the team. So all the teams reflect the diversity of their communities. That was another one of the criteria. So once they were recruited, then we went out into the community and we gave them a three or four hour orientation. We let all the new CSATs members along with the municipal mayor and KPS station commander know about the program. We let them know about community policing, about working together, partnerships, problem solving, working preventively, what their purpose is, what their responsibilities were as CSATs members. It is fully voluntary but it is very proactive. So the expectation is that these relationships in this team would be long-term. Then we built them up to go through the program. It is actually a twelve-week, comprehensive training program that they go through. Everything we do we do via tell-show-do. So we tell them about it, then we show them what it looks like, and then we give them the opportunity to do it. So as you hear the phases of the program you'll see where we've given them the opportunity in every capacity. Once they've gone through the orientation, and the people who were recruited were approved and supported by the police and the municipality, we began their capacity building through training. BOUTELLIS: So at the time the international police, UNMIK still had an executive authority. How were the KPS officers recruited? Was it completely run by KPS officers, the whole process? FLEMING: Completely, it was a completely grassroots effort and on purpose because we wanted it to be sustainable whether UNMIK was here or not, whether we were here or not. We wanted it fully sustainable. So actually there were no internationals involved outside of us except later in the game as partners to work on issues relating to community safety and we'll talk a little more about that in a minute. To begin their capacity building, we needed to bring them to a place of safety because we brought minorities and women and young people together in an environment they'd never been in before. Some of them had past conflict issues, traumas, misperceptions, misunderstandings, miscommunication and we had to build them up as a team. The perfect place to do that was at the time the Kosovo Police Service School in Vushtrri/Vucitrn because since 1999 there were no incidents of violence on campus. It was where all of the police officers had been trained up to that point. They opened their doors to bringing in municipal and community leaders as well in this training and this has been the training site for us and this program ever since. It has been a really good experience for them to work together vulnerably but without risk. It is a safe zone; a neutral zone for everybody. So we bring all the new CSATs members there for three comprehensive days and we spend the whole three days breaking down barriers, perceptions, building them up as a team. We teach them about democracy and consensus and group development and dealing with difficult situations and really building them up because they're so diverse we want to build them up as one cohesive team with one goal. They write their mission statement, which always states -their role and responsibility to reduce crime and increase safety in their community together with the community. BOUTELLIS: Of the first group, how many members of the municipality, the community leaders and KPS were part of the first groups? FLEMING: About forty per team. BOUTELLIS: So per village, one team per village? FLEMING: When I say municipality it is like our cities back home. So like the city of San Diego would have one team. So the city of Vushtrri/Vucitrn had one team of about forty people. The makeup is about 25% police, 25% municipality and 50% community is generally the makeup of each of these teams. BOUTELLIS: During the three days they were staying on site? FLEMING: On campus. BOUTELLIS: So sleeping over? FLEMING: Exactly. They sleep there, they eat there, they train there, they have their free time there and it really helped to build them up as a team. BOUTELLIS: And the only incentives for the program were-there was no per diem, there was only food and board? FLEMING: Exactly and transportation. We didn't transport them in the middle of the training, only the first day and the last day. So really their motivation was their own civic initiative, their own willingness to participate and be part of something important. It was life changing for every student since then. Really it has been an amazing experience. So after three days we send them back out into the community. In the training we teach them how to put together a community meeting so they can bring people from all facets of the community to come together so that they can share the information about what it is that they're doing and who they are as a CSAT but also to gain information from the community about their concerns and issues in relation to crime and safety. We help them to facilitate but they really take it over, facilitate this meeting. BOUTELLIS: Weekly? FLEMING: They only did it once in the formal pilot training, but now they conduct two. Sometimes they have as many as 200 people that come to the community meetings. Again it is all voluntary, all we do is provide snacks, chips and cookies and juice and water. They gather information from the community. They get a whole list of concerns, crime, safety, livability, sometimes infrastructure, unemployment. They get the list of concerns and then they work together through a democratic process so they can see it live and in action in the community. They prioritize those concerns to their top four or five. Then we bring the team-. BOUTELLIS: Can I interrupt? What were some of the concerns that were prioritized by the groups? FLEMING: The concerns were everywhere from prostitution and trafficking of human beings to illegal wood cutting, stray dogs, lack of street lighting, unemployment, drugs in schools, fear of the police. You name it. Really the gamut was all the way across the board. BOUTELLIS: Different priorities for different communities. FLEMING: Exactly. The smaller the community, the more infrastructure concerns there were. Lack of electricity, lack of running water, lack of clean drinking water, a lot of environmental issues ended up on the top of the agenda, which was really encouraging for us because you see the environment that they've been living in. So they prioritize those concerns and we take them back to the school now called Kosovo Center for Public Safety Education and Development, so we should call it KCPSED now, or the Center. We take them back to the school, the Center, and we walk them through another three days of a problem-solving process. So we teach them to go through SARA (Scanning Analysis Response and Assessment) which is an acronym for a problem-solving model that is being used all over the world. All it is is a problem-solving model that helps people to be able to take a problem and walk it through a true analysis to get to the underlying conditions of the problem, the cause of the problem before they develop a response. So often there's a problem like stray dogs and they go okay, we'll get the hunting club and the police and the municipality to work together and we'll go kill the dogs and problem solved-for about a week. Then it comes up again. So we teach them to really look at the underlying conditions. So they took those problems that they got from the community in the classroom and we walked them through this process. They worked in sub-teams, four or five sub-teams. We always have police within each team, municipal in each team, community in each team. We walk them through this process to develop a project action plan to be able to implement in their communities. The problems that they've taken on we've talked a little bit about but the one thing that we really focus on is not only the underlying conditions but that they have to address several components of the crime. They have to address the location, they have to address the victim and they have to address the offender. If they don't impact-it's a crime triangle- and if they don't impact all three sides of the triangle, it is just a temporary solution. You take the gangsters out of your park and you don't do anything to change the park and you don't do anything to change the mentality of the victims, the bad guys just come back in. So we trained them how to problem solve these things so that they change the makeup of the park and they improve the lighting and they clean it up, and they actually bring families in to use the park. Bad guys don't like to be around families. Then we change the mentality of the victims, take back their parks, ownership, empowerment. BOUTELLIS: Were the concerns interethnic? Were there any in the mixed communities? FLEMING: Freedom of movement was a big issue, interethnic cooperation. A lot of the projects focused on bringing the multiethnic youth together. I think about 80% of the population of Kosovo is under the age of 25. So if we don't focus on the youth of course the future is bleak. So a lot of them involved youth. A lot of the environmental projects were about bringing the majority and minority communities together for common goals, common purpose, whether it is quality of life, safety, freedom of movement, livability. What is also interesting is the byproduct of some of these projects; even if they weren't intended to be multiethnic they were multiethnic because of the makeup of the team. A byproduct was interethnic reconciliation. We saw a lot of it and now it is much more focused. In some communities where there are new returns and they want to reintegrate the newly returned minorities they'll implement a project to reintegrate through addressing environmental issues. [IVushtrri/Vucitrn 20:08] put together a project called Road to Integration. It was a paved road that connected two villages, one [IAshkali/Roma] and the other Albanian.. By bringing them together for this one common project it started building relationships, started building a history with the two communities and they're able to work more closely together. The next step is once they go through the problem-solving training then we take them back into the community and they actually start to implement their project action plans to implement solutions to the problems. They have to bring in more stakeholders,other partners. They may have to gather additional information about the problem. If it is drugs in schools they may have to do a survey in the schools to find out how bad the problem is, what is the drug of choice? What are the regulations? Do they protect the youths? Can they search lockers? They have to do a lot of research. Then they implement the projects. They, the CSAT, brings the community back together and they do this on their own; all we do is watch. They conduct another community meeting and they report back to the community the work that they're doing and the progress that they made on the projects. The community now has an opportunity then to assist. If it is environmental cleanup, they can volunteer at that point. Maybe they're doing traffic safety where they have to pour concrete, maybe a local concrete layer can offer the services of his employees to lay the concrete for sidewalks near the schools, something like that. They actually do an official graduation at that point, just showing that they successfully completed, at that point, about nine weeks with us. Then they continue to work together virtually forever as a team. They implement these projects, they take on new projects, they do other community meetings. They meet new people; they train new people for their teams. It is really an amazing project. Right now we have twenty CSATs teams in twenty municipalities, twenty cities, with over 800 Kosovars involved, fully as volunteers. We have trained sixty CSATs members to be trained trainers. So now all of the training is done by CSATs trained trainers. No internationals participate in the program any more except for me and my Russian colleague who is seconded to the OSCE, as this is a bilaterally-funded project of the USDoJ/ICITAP and the OSCE. It is OSCE Department of Public Safety, Community Safety Development Section. So part of my staff is from ICITAP, the other part is from the OSCE, but it is really a grassroots effort at this point. There are other things that have evolved from this program which are still part of the CSATs. Because we have so many CSATs working successfully all over Kosovo and we have so many people involved, it's very difficult for us to keep track of them all. So every team, every CSAT, before they leave their formal training, has identified two leaders that represent them as our liaisons to the team and the voice from the team to us. They represent the team in many capacities, whether it is training, whether it is meetings, whether it is meeting with ministry regarding-the central government regarding issues. We've had our leaders travel to other countries and train other communities and other police officers in this area. So they really are a very active group. BOUTELLIS: Which countries? FLEMING: Albania primarily, Macedonia, Serbia. Actually most of the Serbian work at this point has been with internationals but we're getting more cooperation all the time. We get countries calling us regularly to be able to implement similar projects in their countries all over southeastern Europe, but also places like Northern Ireland where they monitored us for two years and then was able to implement a similar project there to bring the communities and police together. Other areas have begun creating teams like ours and we continue to add additional training for them. BOUTELLIS: So after the twelve week program how do you evaluate the program and its impact at the end of it? FLEMING: We did formal lessons learned immediately after each of the programs, but it was really more of an on-the-ground evaluation. We met with everyone of the teams within a month's time to determine their progress, to continue to mentor and support them and be able to see where there might be gaps either in the training or in our work to be able to improve it. We also met with the program team at the end of every formal program to find out what has worked, what didn't work, how we could improve it. So the program has evolved year after year with each delivery. But a formal impact assessment was never done. So we self-initiated a participatory impact assessment a year and a half ago. This was a huge undertaking because we didn't have staff or budget to do it, but the OSCE provided a consultant to come in and assist. Team members went out in the field and really did an excellent job gathering information for the impact assessment. It is just now going through the final editing and we anticipate it will go to print-it has to go through translation-but it will go to print in the next few months. You're more than welcome to a copy of it. The impact assessment showed the long-term impacts that this program has had in several areas. Some in particular are freedom of movement, multiethnic relationships, the relationship between the police and the community, traffic safety and environmental. What we allowed them to do is identify those focal areas that they felt had the greatest impact and in fact they did. You'll see the projects, there are hundreds of projects and the impact of those projects in that capacity is really difficult to track. So we probably have great impact in other areas, we just didn't focus on those. We also identified gaps. One of the difficulties is getting the teams to be able to work together because a lot of the problems that are an issue in one community are an issue in another. How do we bring the communities together when communication is so poor just across Kosovo period because of technology and not being able to pay for phone cards and those kinds of things. So it identified some gaps in there. How do we get the communities, the CSATs, to be able to communicate with each other. If a team has identified leadership and that leadership moves or that leadership ends up going in a different direction they lose their coordination. So how do we make sure that we always have good coordination among the teams, those kinds of things. So we'll be modifying the program based on those... BOUTELLIS: So we're five years down the road from the pilot program with the first four municipalities and you're mentioning the big turn out aside from the participants but also from the community would attend. One issue is in other countries with these community forums there is now a major problem, the attendance sort of fades away. What has happened five years down the road, and how often do they meet also. FLEMING: We don't regulate them at all. In fact, I'll tell you two components of the program which will help to answer this question. The two leaders from each team we meet with quarterly. So four times a year we meet with these two leaders and the two leaders from each team, now there are forty total, make up what they call the CSAT Executive Council. So four times a year the leaders from each team come together and they're able to share information and resources. They're able to share successes, they're able to coordinate efforts and that kind of stuff. So this has really helped the leadership to stay informed, stay motivated and to continue to inform their teams. One of the other issues is apathy. We have that problem at home. We can rally people together if a kid just got killed in a crosswalk by a drunk driver but then what happens afterwards? Really what they've done is-and there is always some rotation. But what they do is they take on projects as they see fit. The projects are so broad that they really always can have some attention to it. Like ours are generally crime-related. So you have a big crime spree, burglaries, something like that then we respond to that. Here it could be cleanup of a park or building a cultural center, or putting street lights up or domestic violence. There are just so many areas that need work, so many areas where community awareness is lacking. But you'll see the teams will go-because they're very fluid, they don't stay in their sub-teams. So maybe one CSAT is leading a project over here with community members and police officers, ten CSATs or twenty CSATs on a team are working on this. So they're self motivated. Because they're leaders, they're involved in this stuff anyway. It just provides additional resources. This is the difference between this program and any other program I've heard of. It is community-driven with the police and the local government, but it is community driven. So they don't have to wait for the police officer to contact them, they don't have to wait for the municipal official or our city council to rally the community together. It is purely grassroots, anybody can take the lead at any time on a project. I think that helped to make a big difference. The other thing is they're not politically motivated. This was a huge lesson for us. You see after elections the whole political party switched. Now when that happens in our country that's big enough; but the basic community isn't impacted. Here everything changes; the whole leadership structure changes and everybody starts over. But the CSATs don't have to do that because they're not motivated by politics, they're not run by politics, they're not regulated by politics. So even though the mayor may change and the whole municipality, they're there as community members whether they're police officers or municipal leaders or whatever. So they stay involved. BOUTELLIS: Municipal leaders will change if there is a change in-? FLEMING: Absolutely. BOUTELLIS: What was the impact of the parallel elections that were run in some communities where there was Serbian ethnic groups? FLEMING: For the CSATs, the election, very little. The impact that the last few months has had on the CSATs is that all of them are diverse teams and they established really good relations with their multiethnic communities. Everybody was working together. For political reasons and because of media, scares, etc., some people had to retreat from their activities, their CSAT activities. This was a huge problem. So some of the teams have rallied together to focus in those communities that retracted, whether it is an environmental issue or a school workshop or something to try and get them reintegrated. We have other CSATs, you know police officers, Serbian police officers walked off the job after independence. Some of our CSATs were able to bring them back on the job because they had good relations with them. But as far as the elections, there was no impact that I'm aware of at all. Certainly the tensions since February 17th have had some impact. A lot of our trainers are minorities and some of our Serbian trainers, some of our best trainers have had to decline training for us just during this time because they believed it wasn't safe for them. Whether it is perception or reality I don't know but they felt it wasn't safe for them. BOUTELLIS: You said sixty trainers have been trained so the program continues to expand to more municipalities, you have twenty right now. Are the programs still run in the Vushtrri Center? FLEMING: Yes. So every community that had a CSAT is still functioning since 2003. What happens is some people will rotate out. Let's say if we have youth and they go off to the university or some person goes off somewhere else and they're not able to stay as actively involved. The teams recruit new team members. It used to be they would have to come and we'd train them but now because we have all the trained trainers, they're going to be able to train their new CSAT members in their communities; they don't have to go through the nine or twelve-week program because they already have a sound team. They just need to get the information about working in partnership, problem solving, how to do the SARA problem-solving model. They'll go and work within a team that is already really experienced. That is how they're able to get fresh blood, fresh energy, get more youth involved. Some teams were recruited because they thought that's what that team needed. Then after the team worked together for a few years they realized theye really lacking in women, lacking in youth. So they can bring in as many areas of diverse team members as they want, because they're not regulated. So the goal is to have a CSAT in every municipality in Kosovo. There are right now 30 plus new pilot municipalities in Kosovo. BOUTELLIS: So the program is still using the Vushtri center so there is some kind of implicit support of the new institutions of Kosovo. FLEMING: Absolutely, absolutely. In fact, we've been lucky to have their support since day one. The current leadership of the center is really supportive. They provide the transportation for the students, they provide the classroom, the lodging. The only things we pay for are the meals and our training materials. Whenever we have meetings we can meet there. Whenever some of our CSATs have projects, multiethnic youth camp-Handikos is a disabled organization within Kosovo. They want to run their Olympics and CSATs are involved with that. They're able to do it at the center. They've really been supportive since day one about these efforts. Because the other law enforcement agencies or the other first responding agencies are now working more closely together through the center, our teams are reflecting the same. There are more corrections or border officers or customs officers involved on the teams of the border towns because they realize now the importance of having those where in the first year we wouldn't have had a clue. So yes, it's amazing. BOUTELLIS: Once the twelve weeks' training program is completed, there is virtually no cost associated with the running of the program with the exception of when you bring on a quarterly basis the two leaders. FLEMING: Exactly. All we do is provide the lunch. They host it, they do everything. It's a full day so we provide the lunch for them and the OSCE provides transportation for those who are not nearby. Each CSAT will host one of the quarterly meetings. They're no longer at Vushtri unless people chose to. Rahovec/Orahovac will host one in September and then Dragash/Dragas will host one in March or whatever. We just pick up the lunch. BOUTELLIS: Aside from the Declaration of Independence-related/political issues of some of the Serbian ethnic members not participating any longer, how has the attrition been? FLEMING: It is really low. In fact we've only lost, since 2003, we've only lost two CSATs Executive Council members which is amazing. The leadership really has stayed. They're fully voluntary, they don't get paid a dime. For the trainers, we are now able to provide a very small stipend but we've only been able to do that this last year. But the Executive Council is fully voluntary. Like I said, we've only lost two that I can recall and one of them because he took a position here in the Ministry. So that was kind of nice. BOUTELLIS: How do the Kosovo Police, the former KPS, now the Kosovo Police since the new police law, has a department of community policing under the operations pillar, how does that relate to this program and what is your involvement at the headquarters level with their community police? FLEMING: Good questions. There are actually two departments now that are related. One is the KP Community Policing Unit at the HQ level, you're right, and the other one is the KP Community Affairs Department. We've worked with both of their units I think since their inception so I have some thoughts on this. There are community policing officers throughout Kosovo. But, we found out early on that the most well-trained advanced police officers in Kosovo in the areas of community policing were those who were on our CSATs teams because they had such extensive training. But then they're working with other officers on the street, particularly community policing officers with virtually no community policing training. A lot of the officers were assigned to community policing without any real support of how to do it, even at the supervisory and management level, how to even evaluate them, how to supervise them, how to motivate them. So we developed a two week-? BOUTELLIS: Just to interrupt, do you know the rationale for the creation of these units? Was it an UNMIK-led process? FLEMING: It was-. BOUTELLIS: Community policing is a concept that has been brought about for the whole police force right? How was the idea of an actual department, do you recall? FLEMING: I came in just after that had happened and it was internationally run originally and is still being advised by UNMIK, the community policing unit. So there hasn't been a huge transition. The community policing unit has leadership that is responsible for providing liaison, coordination, support, to community policing units throughout Kosovo. BOUTELLIS: Within the police stations. FLEMING: Exactly. So their direct line supervisor is within the station and then within the region. But the community policing unit at the HQ level is supposed to be kind of a liaison coordinating, helping to support projects, etc. That has never happened, it has failed. So in the last few years we've tried to provide as much support to this unit as possible. UNMIK is working in the mentoring, advising role in this. They bring in really motivated advisers but with no community policing experience so they've never been able to move them to the next level. There was very little coordination in communities from HQ and vice versa, it has become more of a paper-pushing process. Officers are writing up projects or activities. It goes to HQ, it gets stuffed in a drawer and that's it. We've tried to work with them to increase the relations between the officers and the unit, all with support from UNMIK but-. BOUTELLIS: So the KP officers that have participated in your CSAT were mainly at the local level, right? FLEMING: Right. BOUTELLIS: They were not the ones at HQ. FLEMING: But we did, once we developed the Advanced Community Policing Course, required that all of the community policing unit go through the advanced community policing course, it's two weeks. We started it just a few years ago. Now every single community policing officer within KP is trained through this. This advanced course was developed from the Community Safety Action Team's course and then additional areas as well. So the CSATs and the police are all hearing the same thing. They're working the same problem-solving model. They know how to put together projecst. They're being trained to facilitate and organize the community meetings and debates, all the same thing. Every officer that was trained in the advanced course was introduced to their CSAT in their community. So now, if one officer has taken on problem solving projects and the CSATs have taken on problem solving projects, they're probably the same. In this case, this officer has forty more people to assist in the process and they get much more coordination at the community level. The problem is that the Community Policing Unit is still in the same problem because they're under the leadership of UNMIK who doesn't know how to move them forward. So one of the generals created the KP Community Affairs Department run by Lieutenant Colonel INaim Rexha. We insisted at the creation of this unit that everyone of them be trained through the Advanced Community Policing Course and that we get them out into the grassroots working with the officers, getting to know the CSATs, seeing the work that is going on. They've just started in the last few months and already they're making progress. The problem is that we tried to convince them to put the Community Policing Unit under the Community Affairs Department because so much of the work is the same. Someone in their infinite wisdom kept them separate. BOUTELLIS: Now they're two different structures. Community Affairs is also under operations, so is community policing right? But as two different departments. FLEMING: Yes. BOUTELLIS: But they're both under operations. FLEMING: I think so. Under different chains is the problem. Luckily the leadership from both are willing to work together and support each other but they really need support. This is where, we hope, EULEX can come in. We've been their primary advisors as best we can but we have other mandates, we have other responsibilities. So really it is a hit and miss. So we work a lot with the officers on the grassroots level, with their projects and support them and provide additional training or mentoring if we can. EULEX has brought in advisors to help, but so far, number one, they haven't been able to kick off, and number two they have limited experience in this area. So we will continue to stay involved in both these departments to assist any way we can. BOUTELLIS: Can you describe what this advanced community policing course is like? Is it just another course in Vushtri Center now that is offered to police? FLEMING: We wrote it, funded by ICITAP and OSCE. We wrote it and we trained it for the first few years. Then our CSATs trained trainers started training about 50% of the course and our ICITAP team started training the other 50%. Some of what advanced community policing officers is getting is more extensive than what CSATs are getting. They have more conflict resolution, more facilitation. They have a whole section on communication skills. We didn't need that with the CSATs as much because we were building them as a team and then taught them how to communicate with each other. But this is more about how they communicate with the community. So now it is fully locally trained and it has all been at the Center. KP has taken over the course so it is officially theirs. They don't have the capacity within the Center to train it yet. We have police officers in the field so what we do is we have a CSAT-trained trainer who is a police officer, we have a CSAT-trained trainer who is a municipal or community leader and we have two, those working together in the training. So that is also helping to build relations. We're finding more and more now that our officers are involved in the CSATs and work in the communities but now they're all trained so we're going more into patrol and supervisors. The other thing we had to do is we had to additionally train mid managers in community policing and we had to work more closely with the KPS Station Commanders. We've trained all of the KPS Station Commanders in the areas of problem solving, partnerships, prevention, how to-we didn't go in depth about how to supervise their officers but the whole philosophy and why they need to be working proactively and transparently instead of just reactively. We trained all of the Municipal Mayors that were here up until this past year. Once they switched over, we put on training for all the new Mayors and KPS Station Commanders as well. Same thing, about the CSATs, about the work of the community policing, about the philosophy and how they can work together, about the Community Affairs Department and other forums that are involved in community safety initiatives. BOUTELLIS: There has been an attempt since 2006 to create more external oversight for the police with the police inspectorate that is under the Minister of Internal Affairs. How does you activity relate to the building of oversight mechanisms, at least external oversight and accountability to the communities? FLEMING: The police inspectorate is doing an excellent job and there is a place for them. The only real connection that they have, what we've seen, even back home is that when we bring the community and the police to work together on issues of crime, safety and security they become more transparent, more responsible and more accountable to the community. So we personally have never gotten a single complaint of police officers on the street causing problems. The police inspectorate is investigating problems of course, but I think that we've been able to prevent a lot of those kinds of complaints because of the relationships that are being built at the grassroots level. The other thing is through community policing officers, when they're building relationships with the communities and local government, because the trust is improved or increased, people are more likely to report incidents or crimes or misconduct of police officers. A lot of the teams are working really hard on community awareness campaigns and they're all in the areas of reducing crime and increasing safety and increasing reporting where needed. The areas include domestic violence, traffic incidents, drugs, hooliganism and there is always a community awareness component and in that component is always, look, if you see something you need to report it, or, look, you need to come to us and let's work together to be able to do something to address it. One of the projects that we're working on with the Minister of Internal Affairs Office right now is called "Building Bridges" and it is being headed up with our CSATs to go out into the minority villages and communities and bring police officers with the communities and to discuss issues-we'll have a leaflet with lots of information about policy and procedure and how to respond if you're pulled over, what to do if you're stopped by the police. What are the rights and responsibilities of the police and really just to provide some basic information to the citizen about what their rights are. Then we'll follow it up with community debates where police, the Minister of Internal Affairs' office, us and the local municipality all come together. The community can then say, "Yes, you know what, when I got pulled over, this happened, did the officer have a right to do that?" Or, what happens when I see a kid out in front of the school and I know he's smoking marijuana. Or if I'm harassed by-whatever. So they're building relationships that way as well. This is a new project but our CSATs have done similar projects like this several times over the years. So I think that's where it is making the greatest impact, mostly through prevention and reporting and the cooperation between the police and the community. BOUTELLIS: You mentioned the leaflets. What other vehicles are you using for community awareness campaigns? How do you reach the communities? FLEMING: Mostly it is really in the communities, in the villages. They bring people together through community debates and community meetings because we train them to do this, they're comfortable in doing this, they get a good response. We've done a few leaflets that help but it is always part of a project, whether it is around traffic safety and we get a lot of volunteers involved in creating a safe zone outside the schools with the pedestrian crossing signs on the poles and the sidewalks and everything. Then the brochures come with that as an additional piece. We always invite the media when we're involved in projects, but CSATs implement their projects on their own, so they generally call in their local media to get involved. We haven't done a lot of that. One of the things that OSCE is really strong in is doing community awareness campaigns, but there is just so much going on out there that there hasn't been this huge connection yet. BOUTELLIS: Are there any worries about politicization of the Kosovo police? FLEMING: At the upper level only, really. I think those are the biggest problems with KP right now, is the upper echelon with old-school mentality. So we spend a lot of time supporting the officers from the grassroots up to the station commander level. Then the officers like Lieutenant Colonel Naim Rexha and some other really good, solid democratic leaders. So that through attrition, when that leadership goes, which may be the only way to depoliticize it, they will be strong enough and capable enough to take over...in a democratic way and style of policing. BOUTELLIS: Has petty corruption come up as an issue at the local level? FLEMING: Never. Never in our program. Really this is surprising because their pay is fairly low, their benefits are zero. Never in five years have I received a single complaint of corruption, even petty corruption, at the community level. Now I'm sure it exists. But compared to Macedonia and Albania and some of the other countries we work with, absolutely not. BOUTELLIS: We focused a lot on community policing, but as a police officer yourself and having been here for many years, you've seen the building of the Kosovo Police in general so now I'd like to look at the whole process and ask you what in your opinion are the broader challenges and maybe the priorities at this point. FLEMING: Well, I'll stay on community policing just for about two minutes. One is that we really need a CSAT in every community because this is building the grassroots foundation of democracy Kosovo-wide. We have ensured that politics play no part in their efforts and we make that very clear from the beginning. So that is a priority goal for us. BOUTELLIS: Is there a target year at the rate it is going? FLEMING: We're doing eight a year now and there are twelve more municipalities plus we have pilot municipalities coming up. If we got additional staffing and resources we could do more but right now we're only doing eight a year. In fact, four a year, so we have twelve more to go. We really need two to three years depending on staffing and resources. But as you can see their sustainability is not in question, it's a matter of having one in every municipality so they have that foundation to draw from. Another issue for Kosovo is that they need to streamline, they need to make community policing a full department philosoph, where everybody is working transparently and closely with the communities. There's always a place for units because there are special areas of focus, whether it is investigations, community awareness campaigns, special events on the weekends, but it really needs to be top-down, bottom-up. For Kosovo I think there are a couple of huge challenges. One is corruption. Quite frankly my biggest concern in Kosovo is corruption. BOUTELLIS: In what form? FLEMING: Primarily in government and upper level KP. But we work very closely-. BOUTELLIS: The type of corruption based on political allegiance from former-? FLEMING: Yes. BOUTELLIS: It is not money corruption or organized crime? When we talk about corruption it can be interpreted as many-. FLEMING: Corruption first, organized crime second. I think in the government we work with really great democratic leaders particularly within the Minister of Internal Affair's office and some of the other ministries. But they're having to work within a system that is probably fairly corrupt. Then KP, really it is abuse of power and control more than anything. Organized crime is more of a Kosovo-wide issue because of the unemployment. Our country came from this as well, that's where the money is and that's where the influence is but we're lucky, we're able to impact organized crime at the community level in small pieces by addressing issues of trafficking or prostitution or drugs, smuggling. Our teams are working on all those issues, but we try to get them to focus on real narrow, their area of influence which is their community, not up here because it's too big. We don't take on world hunger, we take on feeding the hungry in our community. Unemployment is huge but they're finding a way to take care of each other. This is amazing. One of the most amazing things I've seen in Kosovo that we would never see at home is to have 80% of a population under the age of 25 with 60 plus percent unemployment, whatever the rates are now and not have rampant violence and gangs and rioting and looting. You don't have it here. The hooliganism as they call it here is an emerging problem but it is still very, very low scale, very small scale. It will continue to grow as they westernize, but a lot of our teams are working on that. So they're addressing it at all different levels. So I think because they have the strength in family, if they can find a way, and there is somebody because it's not our area, find a way to build up those families and preserve the family unit, family structure, they'll be able to really keep their crime rates down. You know the crime rates are nothing compared to ours back home. Really. I don't know the statistics now but our unemployment is 5% and people are "Oh! How are we going to survive this." Theirs is around 65% right now. The other thing western countries are bringing, they're deporting people who had fled during the conflict or the war to these other countries and now because they consider them stable and have freedom of movement they're forcing them back in but there are no jobs for these people. So those are probably my biggest concerns. BOUTELLIS: Returnees. FLEMING: Yes, but they're not necessarily minority returnees which they call IDPs, internally displaced persons, but yes, returning families with no jobs. BOUTELLIS: We talked about the underlying political and economic conditions. Your project is in itself an interesting experiment, innovation. Are there any others that you know of that you think merit attention either led by the international community or maybe also initiated by the Kosovars? FLEMING: This is unique for post conflict society, but even for the United States. Because it is a smaller country and there are fewer people, less than 2 million, we've been able to do this. We're seeing more and more smaller post conflict societies doing the same thing, but it is very innovative. That is, we use a triangle as an example, but what we're finding is that we have players involved at the central government level which is the top level, the municipal level which is the center level and people working at the grassroots level, all on community safety initiatives. So whether it is-no matter what it is, we have them working on all these different levels and they always work independently. I've never seen them work together before. There are always these huge gaps. What we've done in Kosovo is focus really hard on making sure that information gets from the grassroots to central government and then back down. It has been this and this. So what we did is in 2005 we worked together with players all over Kosovo, international and national players and developed a community safety strategy for Kosovo. The strategy is now being revised because of all the changes in the last three years but what this does is it gives Kosovo a map, a road map of how do we work together. How do we ensure that we're effective and we're working efficiently so that all these international and national players aren't duplicating each other? How do we ensure that the right hand knows what the left hand is doing? How do we communicate? So what we've done is we've developed this whole strategy which is the overarching who we are in Kosovo in those areas. But the revisions now are going to include national strategies within there. What ends up happening, even back home, unless you have an institute like the National Crime Prevention Center or the COPS (Community Oriented Policing Services) office, they're creating their own curriculum, they're creating their own problem-solving projects and they're doing this independently in their own communities. They're doing that here, just like we did back home. They don't have this base to draw from. So within this strategy they'll develop a national strategy to impact hooliganism, domestic violence, traffic safety. So anybody, at any level, who wants to take that on, draws from the strategy, is supported by regulation or law or policy. It is already backed, it's already an approved thing. Then they modify it for their own community needs and the implementation will be much better. Really this is innovative I think compared to where we've come from. This Community Affairs Department will be able to better coordinate community policing activities the same way because they're within this strategy. In fact the Community Affairs Department is leading the revisions of the strategy. So there's a lot more information, a lot of players and it is just too much information this late. But the community safety strategy for a national strategy for a country or a region is I think really innovative. I think there are some model strategies out there. I like to think that ours will be one as well. Maybe our past one was, I don't know. I don't know that it has ever been looked at outside, but certainly Croatia I think has written one recently and a couple of other countries where they really are relying on that. Being able to implement it at the grassroots level, central government and municipal levels. BOUTELLIS: The last section I'd like to turn to the international community. There have been a number of different actors here, ICITAP and OSCE working hand-in-hand and the UN international police as part of the UNMIK mission. Are there some lessons from the way the international community works with local police from your experience or observation? FLEMING: We've all made mistakes and I think all of us have some merit in the work that we're doing. I'm particularly proud that we have been able to as an international organization within this arena, been able to stay from the start of something and stay with it, stay with it hopefully to fruition. The international community, the way it is set up, and it doesn't matter what organization it is, they come and go in six months. They rotate before anything has been done. They've collected their paycheck and they go home. Everybody got really geared up and really pumped up and let's do this and then boom. They've got new leaders with new ideas, new this. Starting from the head of mission to the human rights guy out in the field. Really this is a problem, I don't know how they get away with it. It is a problem for the country that they're in, it's a problem for the mission, it is a problem for the other players. This is my first mission but I've been here five years, I've seen a lot of people come and go. I think part of it is that ICITAP has allowed that, OSCE has allowed that. But there are a lot of international players who come in, they don't do the proper analysis. They throw a bunch of money at something. They put a feather in their cap and they go home. So billions of dollars have come into Kosovo and they still don't have chalk in their schools. This is a problem. They don't have proper roads or proper electricity. Billions of dollars have gone just into the electrical plant, and it is just bad money after bad money-good money after bad. So the number one issue for me with internationals, particularly international organizations is lack of coordination of efforts, the lack of long-term leadership, in fact lack of long-term staffing and planning. The only constant are the local staff and they have to go where they're going to get the most pay. Luckily most of my staff have been with me since 2003 but I'm very lucky, most of them move on, they go from mission to mission within their own country. Donor coordination is a catastrophe. If there were a clearing house just for donor coordination, imagine, we would have schools, we would have fire trucks with water in them, we'd have ambulances with defibrillators. But we don't. I think because of the lack of coordination of donations. I think recruitment for mission members-I don't want to group up any-it's hard to make generic statements because they're hard to back up, but I'll make some generalizations. Some countries send their most innovative, most motivated, most qualified people to work in the mission, to represent their organization or their state or their country. Others send them because they can't put them in jail. And we're working side-by-side. We're working side-by-side with people from non-democratic countries who are leading, who are the advisors to the police. They're supposed to be teaching them democratic policing, they've never seen democracy in their life. They've never lived it, they never worked it, they've never seen it in their countries. This is a problem. So the other problem besides good recruitment, getting the best in the missions is a problem but the other is placing people where their experience is. UNMIK gave community policing excellent people to advise them, none of them had any community policing experience. So they're nice people, we like working with them, but we need people who are experts that can raise up a nation. That's the other thing. My understanding, maybe I'm na•ve but my understanding is I was supposed to come and raise up people to take over when we leave so that they don't need us anymore. That's what we're doing, that's what we've done. Other people they make sure that they don't raise anybody up so that they get to stay and keep their paycheck, this is a problem. Again, I feel very fortunate because I'm working with people who are motivated, who do work hard, who are perfectly capable of taking over when I leave. Whether it is in government, police or community, we support those people. We compartmentalize the others if we can. BOUTELLIS: This is the last question. What would be the biggest challenges the Kosovo Police will face when the UN and international donor community will withdraw? FLEMING: I think it is going to be a lot longer than sooner. I was hoping it would be in the next few years but I don't know that. When the transition hits, what has to happen is that the bad guys have to have attritioned out. They have to have good, strong, democratic leadership. If they have good strong, democratic leadership, they're going to do excellent, because already they are a shining star of law enforcement agencies in the Balkans. Really, there are a couple of other agencies that I can think of that I would compare them to, but certainly, I won't mention other countries, but they're looking to Kosovo to see what professional policing looks like. But they have to have good, sound, solid democratic leadership to take over when that happens. Hopefully they'll already be in place. BOUTELLIS: Anything else you'd like to mention? FLEMING: I'd really like to see this come to fruition so that people can actually learn from other people's mistakes and learn best practices because when I came on the mission in 2003 I said, okay, where do I find out what has been done, what has worked and what hasn't worked so that I don't make the same mistakes. They just kind of said, hmmm. I know the OSCE's SPMU (Strategic Police Matters Unit) is working on something similar. BOUTELLIS: RSC? FLEMING: Yes in Vienna. I helped them to compile the newly published document on best practices in community policing, it wasn't allowed to be called that because of some participating states, but it is called Best Practices in Building Community-Police Partnerships It just came out in the last couple of months. You should be able to get a copy of it from their website. We were able to give a lot of this information in that document. I'd really like that those people who are the practitioners, like you said, if one day there really is a place, a clearing house or something that we can draw from. There's plenty of work to go around. Trust me, if somebody else wants to make the mistake before me, great, I'll make plenty of my own. That would be really helpful. So I hope you get to see this thing through. BOUTELLIS: Julie Fleming, thank you very much. Innovations for Successful Societies Series: Policing Oral History Program Interview number: L-3 ______________________________________________________________________ 18 Use of this transcript is governed by ISS Terms of Use, available at www.princeton.edu/successfulsocieties Use of this transcript is governed by ISS Terms of Use, available at www.princeton.edu/successfulsocieties