NAME: Anonymous

OCCUPATION: Police officer

[Note: Due to security reasons, the officer must remain anonymous.] I’m a police officer in Chicago. Cops on TV are always running around with their guns drawn or tossing bad guys against brick walls, and although I do some of that, of course, I’d say that over 90 percent of my job is spent communicating with people. And most of that time is about managing conflict.

In my first few years out of the academy, I responded to a lot of domestic disputes. Neighbors call in about other neighbors making too much noise; spouses and parents call in about fighting in the home. These are unproductive conflicts: screaming, destruction of property, and all too often violence. And few things have the potential to escalate unproductive conflict like uniformed men and women coming into your home with guns, right?

The first thing I do is use my eyes to see if physical injuries are apparent or if a crime has been committed. If so, it’s a domestic violence situation, and I arrest the perpetrator, taking him or her to jail. The conflict is temporarily resolved. Most of the time, however, these calls are incidents of domestic disputes. A crime hasn’t been committed. I can’t make an arrest. And my job becomes much more difficult. Now I have to manage conflict—through mediation.

First, I don’t use any challenging strategies as I might with a drug dealer on the street. I stay nonaggressive (I am, after all, in someone else’s home). I try not to lean forward, I stay out of people’s faces, and I speak in a monotone. I try to exude calmness, because everyone else in the place is freaking out.

One time, I had a man who simply wouldn’t stop screaming at and about his wife: I hate her! I hate her guts! As calmly as possible, I asked, “You hate who?” He said, I hate my wife! I looked shocked and said, “Sir, you hate your wife?” I kept the questions coming. In the academy they call this verbal judo, the sword of insertion. In communication classes, it’s called probing. I asked the man simple questions, getting him down to facts, getting him to think about things reasonably, as opposed to thinking about them emotionally.

Sometimes, I’ll turn to one party and say, as respectfully as possible, “Listen, I know I don’t have a right to ask you to leave your own house, but maybe there’s a cousin’s place you can go crash at for the night, or maybe you can go take a long walk and cool down.” It’s not a win-win or lose-lose resolution; it’s a separation, a temporary one. It’s an escapist strategy, a prevention of further unproductive conflict, a rain check on the situation until a better time, when heads are cooler. Often that’s the best I can do. I’ve got other homes to go to, other conflicts to manage.