Crisis Responders

7. Massively Parallel Roles & Tasks

Crisis Responders act quickly to prevent or contain violent (or sometimes just especially hateful and destructive) confrontations. Their focus may be on preventing eminent violence, bringing an end to ongoing violence, or preventing violence from reemerging (or all of the above.) They may focus on investigating and, where appropriate, correcting inflammatory rumors (such as those that commonly arise following police shootings). As they do this, they also provide assurances that incidents will be investigated and those responsible for wrongdoing will be held accountable. Such efforts are much more effective if they are set up in advance, rather than in response to a specific crisis. This is a role that the Community Relations Service (CRS) played for 60 years, until the Trump administration disbanded it in 2025. (This action is being contested, so CRS may be re-establised. CRS also tried to recruit and train local people to play that role once the CRS left the scene. (The Civil Rights Oral History Project has transcripts of interviews with 20+ former CRS mediators, who explain in detail how they do this.) The Ohio State University's Divided Community Project does much of the same thing, and has free training materials for communities to download to help them plan in advance for effective crisis response. (See BI's interview with DCP Director Bill Froehlich for more information on DCP and links to many of their free materials.) The Trust Network is also trying to recruit local conflict resolvers to be on the watch for brewing problems and to respond to them quickly before they escalate further. Local organizations, such as the "Violence Interruptors" in Chicago (see the Frontline Documentary) can also do similar things with respect to smaller scale, criminal violence. Beyond this, organizations like the RAND Corporation and the wide array of governmental and NGO "PVE" (preventing violent extremism) projects are engaged in large-scale and longer-term efforts to understand and combat the kind of extremism that leads to violence.