If a man assaulted a pregnant friend of yours on the
street and beat her until he broke her jaw, punched her
repeatedly in the stomach, broke two of her ribs, who
would you call? A psychiatrist or a cop?
A cop, of course. Police play a critical role in the quality and timeliness of protection available when someone turns violent.
In our society, we turn to the police to intervene in violence. We call them for protection: our own, a neighbor's, a stranger's on the street. With the availability of 911 emergency dispatch, their presence is often immediate. We believe and trust that they will protect us. Police officers carry the authority to legally remove an assailant, using force to do so if necessary. Police officers initiate the investigation that a prosecutor relies on when bringing a domestic violence case to court.
Historically, however, women who faced violence in their homes could not rely on police protection. Since the larger community saw domestic violence as a private matter, police were trained to respond accordingly. The community and the criminal justice system expected officers to be involved in only the most extreme, isolated cases. Euphemisms for violence reflect this detachment: "family trouble," "domestic dispute," "husband-wife spat," "a domestic." Police training discouraged arrest and state laws prohibited warrantless arrests for misdemeanor crimes. Police were directed to either defuse the situation or attempt to mediate the "dispute," reinforcing a perception of the victim and assailant as equal parties with equal power over each other's behavior.
Victims were left feeling confused and at fault. Having turned to the police for help, they were left blaming themselves for even bothering to call. Battered women turned to police with one set of expectations but the police responded with another, influenced by training and public expectations.
For many years, advocates have pushed the criminal justice system to act promptly and fairly to protect battered women. While a system that large does not change easily or quickly, an increased understanding of the dynamics of violence by its practitioners and the public challenge to violence against women have encouraged a new response.
Over the past twenty years, much energy has gone into reshaping police practice. By means of meetings, lawsuits, policies, and legislation, advocates have insisted that police respond to domestic violence as a crime. In a growing number of communities, policein partnership with advocates and other community institutionsare intervening to protect victims, hold assailants accountable, and challenge the social underpinnings of domestic violence.
The strength of this coordinated intervention lies in the
consistency and uniformity of its message: physically abusive
behavior is against the law, regardless of the relationship
between the assailant and the victim. If you are violent
toward your partner, the community will hold you accountable
through its police, courts, and other institutions.
Police can be active partners in this change, as they are in several pioneering communities. For example, police now play key roles in the community intervention efforts of Colorado Springs, San Francisco, Duluth (MN), Quincy (MA), Madison (WI), San Diego, and Seattle. In those cities, police have changed when and how they make arrests, conduct investigations, and write reports. They have changed their relationships with and the level of support they provide to prosecutors and victim advocates.
The variety and strength of support offered to battered women has also significantly expanded in the last two decades. As community-based advocates have pushed police, prosecutors, hospitals, and social service agencies to respond to domestic violence, these systems have developed new policies and services.
The title advocate has been applied to a wide range of victim assistance work. We have learned, however, that the alignment of a positionnamely, how and where a practitioner worksinfluences its function and the degree to which it can affect system-wide change. Here, we make a distinction between victim services delivered within a governmental or quasi-governmental system, and advocacy for change from the outside.
Maintaining a voice outside these systems is central to advocacy. Advocacy requires that the needs of battered women, individually and as a class, come first. This purpose can conflict with the interests of the criminal justice system as it focuses on arrest, prosecution, and sentencing.
In an effort to improve law enforcement's understanding of
domestic violence, and its response to battered women,
advocates have begun to work directly with police, in both
coordinated community response projects and on-scene crisis
response teams. To maintain their distinct role, advocates
must be mindful of the challenges that come with increased
police collaboration and partnership. Creating police change,
and broader system change, requires that we understand
ourselves as advocates: our own attitudes, functions, job
structures, and purposes.
Our personal history shapes our response to domestic violence. Whether officer or advocate, our reactions are grounded in our thoughts and experiences about women, men, marriage, relationships, power, control, families, and violence. Our distinct backgrounds, shaped by race, gender, class, family of origin, friendships, and cultural influences, mold our attitudes and influence our response on the scene. The challenge to police officers and advocates alike is recognizing how these attitudes affect our work.
Policing, for example, remains an overwhelmingly male
profession. In 1999, women represented only 14.3% of the
officers in larger law enforcement agencies (those having
one hundred or more officers).
For the few women in policing, domestic violence calls may be seen as a no-win situation. If a female officer is isolated within an unsupportive or hostile agency, she may feel pressure to be contemptuous of women who have been battered. She may want to distance herself from other women, particularly those seen as weak and vulnerable enough to be battered. She may resist doing a thorough job on domestic violence cases if those calls are not considered by her peers to be real police work. She may live with an abusive partner.
In impoverished and in culturally and racially distinct communities, police action may be characterized by distrust and tension. Battered women may face significant dilemmas when weighing their needs for police protection against the negative impact of police presence in their communities. Officers who live in these communities may feel personal pressure to try to bridge their law enforcement role and their community's negative experience with police.
The unusual strength of the police culture is largely
attributable to two factors. First, the stressful and
apparently dangerous nature of the police role produces
collegiate bonds of considerable strength, as officers
feel themselves besieged in an essentially hostile world.
Second, the long hours and the rotating shifts kill most
prospects for a normal (wider) social life; thus, the
majority of an officer's social life is confined to his or
her own professional circle.
Policing can be an isolating profession. As Malcolm Sparrow notes, the long hours and rotating shifts push officers into each other's company, reinforcing a closed, defensive organizational culture. It is important that advocates also understand these dynamics when attempting to influence change.
Promoting change in policing requires an appreciation of the many demands on officers, from community members and other advocacy organizations, to their sergeants and the district attorney. At the same time that advocates present their case for improved response to domestic violence, other interestsfrom crimes against the elderly and drunk driving, to speeding on Main Street, computer fraud, and Internet crimeswill vie for police attention.
Advocates attempting to influence police practice must acknowledge that they know little about what police work is truly like. Like most of the public, our understanding of police work is derived largely from fiction: television, movies, and best-selling novels. While there is a thread of truth in the images of nonstop, sensational calls, it is a limited and one-dimensional view. Policing is far more complex in the nature and breadth of its interactions with the public. Like any profession, police officers resist uninformed outsiders telling them what to do. Advocates in a battered women's shelter would be taken aback, and more than a little defensive, if the local police department appeared with a list of policy and training demands dictating how the shelter should be run. Our negotiations and discussions about police reform will lack credibility, if not accuracy, if we cannot show some familiarity with the realities of the job. To develop a better understanding of policing, advocates should seize opportunities to ride with patrol officers and observe officers in other assignments.
Most officers, however, acknowledge a level of public accountability for police that is higher than for other governmental agencies. They accept that it is reasonable to hold police work to a higher standard because of their authority to detain and use force.
Increasingly, as community-policing strategies are adopted (see discussion on page eight), some police organizations are redefining their roles to reflect stronger expectations of community service. This, in turn, attracts police recruits who have different backgrounds and expectations than their predecessors. In the end, the most effective way to change police attitudes may be through recruitment and selection. Advocates should work to ensure that police departments recruit officers who bring or can develop a high-level awareness of the dynamics of violence against women. Ideally, new officers will come from diverse backgrounds and life experiences, and will possess the curiosity to welcome new approaches and ideas.
Organizational change comes from altering how people see their function in the criminal justice system and how they carry out the work assigned to them. Advocates who want to alter the way criminal justice institutions respond to domestic violence need to understand the role of each practitioner, the connections between them, and the significance of structure, policy, and training.
For example, if dispatchers see their function as managing trafficdirecting individual officers to respond to isolated calls for servicethey will not gather the information needed to successfully prosecute a crime, or to protect officers and the public. However, if dispatchers see their function as the start of an investigative process, they will ask questions that initiate evidence collection and enhance officer and victim safety. Their tapes and logs can provide evidence that corroborates injuries, documents a caller's fear for her safety, and identifies possible witnesses. Dispatchers who operate in the broader context of an investigation will inform responding officers about possible weapons, prior calls, and any restraining orders on record. They will be the first link in establishing probable cause for arrest.
If police officers see their function as getting in and out of a domestic violence call quickly without having to come back during their shift, they will not be concerned with establishing probable cause for an arrest or collecting evidence to support prosecution. If their role is to diffuse the immediate situation and get on to the next call, there is little time to provide victim support. They may actually discourage a victim's involvement by questioning whether she wants to "press charges," pointing out how inconvenient it will be, or leaving the impression that they might arrest her if they have to return. They may resort to dual arrest instead of investigating questions of self-defense or predominant aggressor.
The mechanics of a job must also be included in reform efforts. It is essential, albeit sometimes difficult, to alter the patterns by which practitioners collect and share information. Forms, procedures, and regulations are the backbones of institutions, and largely shape practitioners' priorities. Any discipline, including law enforcement, has a rigid system of information collection and documentation. What a report or form asks for, and who sees it, greatly influences what questions are asked and documentedor never asked at all.
Existing police structures tend to be mechanistic and
highly centralized. Headquarters is the brain that does
the thinking for the whole organization.
In the short term, this structure might promote top-down changes in policy that direct officers to respond to domestic violence calls in a prescribed way. There are some long-term problems with this process, however, as Sparrow notes.
New ideas are never conceived, evaluated, and
implemented in the same place, so they are seldom "owned"
or pursued enthusiastically by those in contact with the
community...[This approach] allows for no sensitivity
either on a district level (i.e., to the special needs of
the community) or on an individual level (i.e., to the
particular considerations of one case).
Literature, discussion, and research in the field influence every profession. Knowing where police get their information is an important element in the change process. On a local level, it means understanding and contributing to the sources of information that shape policy and practice. On a national level, it means questioning research which misses the nature of domestic violence and its significance to police response.
For most patrol officers, professional literature is
not the academic publications such as the
American Journal of Police
or
Journal of Family Violence
. The everyday sources of information are trade journals,
such as
Police Chief, Police, Law and Order, Law Enforcement
News, Crime Control Digest, Community Policing
Exchange,
and the
FBI Law Enforcement Bulletin
. Practitioners, those whose daily and primary job is
policing, usually contribute to these publications. The
articles are not research studies, but reports on
different opinions, tactics, or policies the author holds
or has experienced.
Trade journal articles focus increasingly on a proactive police response, accepting as a given that police will respond to domestic violence as a crime. The question they pose is not whether to become involved, but how to do so most effectively. They are a good source of information for advocates seeking to learn more about police response and develop training resources. While police officers are also influenced by academic journals, most professionals in the criminal justice system are exposed to research studies by means of popular reports. If the media account is weak, uncritical, or promotes a single or simplified aspect of the research, few officers, like most of us, will go beyond it to examine the source. They are also unlikely, lacking both time and access, to seek out analyses and critiques from sources who can review research within the context of working with women who have been battered.
The Internet offers police and advocates access to an
ever-growing body of literature about policing and
domestic violence. The National Criminal Justice Reference
Center, for example, provides on-line access and printable
versions of National Institute of Justice research
findings and publications by the Office of Community
Oriented Policing, Office of Justice Programs, and other
federal agencies, plus links to many related sites.
In addition to understanding the elements of change
discussed in the Introductionattitudes, function, structure,
and literaturesome specific techniques will help you develop
a relationship with the police in your community and further
your efforts to make real change. These guidelines have a
tried-and-true
quality, having been articulated almost twenty years ago by
Nancy Loving and used by many advocates in the intervening
decades. They apply equally to working with other parts of
the criminal justice system: prosecutors, courts, and
corrections. Loving's advice meshes well with the qualities
of community policing: partnership, collaboration, and
problem solving.
Not every situation or interaction with police requires that you use all these techniques. In a community where little has been done to establish a coordinated response to domestic violence, or where police have been resistant to changing their practices, advocates may have to try a series of strategies before finding the most effective. In a community where police participation has been proactive and thorough, it may be enough to identify problem areas and bring them to the attention of police managers.
Since the mid-1980s, the United States has seen significant exploration of the function and structure of police work. Anyone attempting to influence agency policy and action should understand the principles of and recent discussions about community policing.
Community policing emphasizes a police agency's partnership with the community it serves. Police priorities are set by means of consultations with the public. Under community policing, the scope of police actions broadens: no longer are officers focused solely on their immediate responses to isolated calls for service, but are assuming wider problem-solving and prevention responsibilities.
Community policing alters the mechanics of police work by
valuing the local or neighborhood beat officer and an array
of skills not traditionally associated with patrol work:
interviewing and interpersonal communication, mobilizing and
building self-respect among communities, and analytical and
problem-solving skills.
Problem-solving
policing
emphasizes "the power of thoughtfulness and analysis when
applied across the whole spectrum of police activity."
While not every police agency has adopted a community problem-solving approach to its work, these ideas are becoming increasingly widespread, influencing police structure and service delivery in many ways. Advocates must be aware of these trends in order to understand the agencies in their communities, to influence change, and to make the best case possible for greater police involvement in the community response to domestic violence.
With the 1994 Crime Bill, the Clinton Administration promised to put "100,000 new cops on the beat," with an orientation toward community partnerships and problem-solving, and an emphasis on prevention. The Department of Justice established the COPS Office (Community Oriented Policing Services) to administer hiring grants and related programs.
The impact of this activity on police job structure and
response has been mixed. As noted in the Urban Institute's
evaluation of the first four years of the COPS program,
"adoption of community policing has very different meanings
in different jurisdictions."
Other agencies have experimented with community policing without any full commitment or immersion in the ideas. They are driven by small groups of enthusiastic individuals, but suffer from organizational conflict and inconsistency about what it means. Yet another, perhaps smaller, group of agencies has adopted community policing in name, but not in spirit, to obtain federal money. Advocates should discern what motivates the police agency in their community, since that may influence the genuineness of their partnership.
Along with the hiring grants, COPS funded a range of special projects, including over 300 domestic violence grants to support local partnerships among police, victim advocates, and other community organizations. This spending and attention has not necessarily improved police understanding of domestic violence among all of its recipients, however. Community policing, like "traditional" policing, can deny or ignore the context of battered women's lives, the complexity of problems they face, and the many strategies required to achieve safety.
Community policing usually results in an increased
willingness on the part of police to explore partnerships and
incorporate the expertise of battered womens advocates into
their response to domestic violence. Communities with
stronger collaborations and improved police responsesuch as
Chicago, Colorado Springs, Knoxville, San Diego, Duluth, San
Francisco, Madison, Portland, and Seattlehave embraced
community policing, at least to the level of experimentation,
if not full commitment. In a growing number of communities,
the response to domestic violence has become more proactive
and reflective of community engagement, problem solving, and
prevention.
These partnerships have varying degrees of depth, however.
Some have been more grant-driven than organic. The Urban
Institute's findings about police-community partnerships can
also apply to those between police and advocates: "all too
often, partnerships were in name only or simply standard,
temporary working arrangements."
Since the release of the Minneapolis arrest study in 1984,
arrest has dominated the discussion about police response to
domestic violence. Twenty-three states and the District of
Columbia now mandate arrest in certain misdemeanor domestic
violence cases. In eight states, preferred arrest is the law.
Thirty-one states mandate arrest for order of protection
violations.
The replication studies that followed the Minneapolis
experiment are popularly considered to devalue arrest in
domestic violence crimes. Like the issue itself, however, the
findings are far more complicated and must be examined in the
context of the dynamics of domestic violence and the
principles of coordinated community intervention.
Well before the Minneapolis study, battered women's advocates urged police to treat domestic violence as criminal conduct and to arrest assailants when they had probable cause to do so. They wanted police to apply their professional knowledge and skills to domestic violence cases, just as they did to other types of calls. They wanted police to know the criminal laws available to them and to use their interviewing, evidence collection, and report writing skills. The experiences of battered women and the inaction of police led many advocates to prefer systematic arrest, for many reasons.
At the same time, advocates were very aware of the liabilities and problems with mandatory arrest--namely, relying on a system whose traditional response has been inaction and victim blaming:
Advocates have long known that arrest, standing alone, may not make a difference. Arrest has been most effective when it has been implemented as part of a comprehensive approach that also includes individual support and advocacy for women; systematic prosecution, sentencing, and monitoring of abusers; a specialized court-ordered abuser counseling program; interagency coordination, policy development, and monitoring; and, law enforcement training, reporting, and monitoring of domestic violence calls. Arrest is only one part of the community change process necessary to challenge domestic violence. It cannot be the single focus.
Anyone attempting to change police practice must understand the complexities of arrest and how it might influence women's safety. Managing mandatory arrest laws or policies means asking victims what happened: Did arrest make a difference? Why? Why not? It means respecting their observations and the implications for policy change, further police training, and improved victim services.
The quality of officer-public interaction is one example of this complexity that the arrest studies overlooked. They isolated police response into narrow acts of arrest, separation, and mediation, disconnected from police attitudes toward and interactions with the parties involved, as well as the larger history of police-community relations.
How do officers treat people? What effect does the officer have on the victim and suspect? Does it make a difference if an officer is disinterested or hostile? The arrest studies did not address these questions. One critique noted that "the studies may in some ways distort rather than clarify our understanding of different police responses to domestic violence," and noted three ways in which this happens:
If they are to be accountable to battered women, arrest
laws and policies must have the following oversight: close
and consistent monitoring; training on the policy throughout
the agency--from dispatchers to supervisors to patrol
officers; training on problem areas such as dual arrest and
the concepts of self-defense and primary physical aggressor;
and exchange of information and experiences with other
communities. Police practice, including arrest, will maximize
safety only when it occurs within the context of community
intervention developed around these key components:
The Duluth Domestic Abuse Intervention Project developed
the Safety and Accountability Audit to address the need for
oversight of police and criminal justice system intervention.
An audit can be limited to single step, such as the method by which a victim is notified of an offender's release from jail, or it can examine a series of steps. For example, a Safety Audit could be conducted on dual arrest cases, including all steps from the 911 call to the police report to the prosecutor's action. Alternately, it could help determine what happens when a suspect is gone when police arrive. It can also be used to examine broad issues, such as a system's response to specific groups of people. It could be used, for example, to investigate the experience of communities of color or the system's response to children in domestic violence cases. The information collected is analyzed to determine whether and how to change or develop policies, administrative procedures, laws, system linkages, training, technology, and underlying assumptions.
Policy is a statement of how police are expected to
conduct their business. A policy on any given subject might
be a paragraph or two, or it might run to twenty pages,
depending upon an organization's approach, the subject
covered, and the level of detail needed to outline
implementation. The operational needs and philosophy of the
agency determine some policies, such as when officers can or
must carry weapons off-duty. State legislatures dictate other
policies. In Wisconsin, for example, police departments must
have written policies on the use of force, vehicle pursuits,
complaints, and domestic violence. Eighteen states now
require local written policies for handling domestic violence
cases.
The International Association of Chiefs of Police (IACP),
as part of its National Law Enforcement Policy Center, has
issued model policies covering domestic violence and domestic
violence by police officers. Released in 1990 and revised in
1996, the IACP package includes a model policy,
Domestic Violence Concepts and Issues Paper
, and a training key. It was designed to provide direction
and training resources for agencies working on a domestic
violence policy. In 1999, the IACP released a similar model
and background paper on officer involved domestic violence.
No single model fits every agency or locale. The IACP provides a blueprint from which police or sheriff's departments can build or revise their own policies, adapted to fit their communities. It provides guidelines and direction, but must be tailored to each community. It sets standards and recommendations for police response with which advocates should be familiar.
The Internet provides access to several law enforcement
domestic violence policies and related information,
including:
New York State Model Domestic Violence Policy: Guidelines
for Criminal Justice, Legal, and Judicial Systems
, the Metropolitan Nashville Police Department policy,
Model Policy for Kentucky Law Enforcement,
the San Diego Police Department's domestic violence manual,
and model policies for Wisconsin agencies, which operate
under a mandatory arrest law with a primary physical
aggressor standard. Advocates can also find the
Model Code on Domestic and Family Violence
from the National Council of Juvenile and Family Court
Judges. This is a useful tool for assessing local policies
and state law.
Domestic Violence Protocol for Law Enforcement
adopted by the Santa Clara (CA) County Police Chief's
Association is an example of a comprehensive policy, and one
that is available in several formats on the Internet.
It has become the standard in police agencies to define domestic violence as a crime and to require arrest under probable cause. Policies developed in the past ten years, therefore, tend to be variations on mandatory arrest, requiring that officers shall, must, will or should arrest. Whether or not a policy is written with a mandatory or preferred arrest point of view will depend upon state law, departmental philosophy, and community participation. Battered women's advocates have an opportunity to influence policy by becoming well versed in a variety of models and approaches.
While policy states expectations, training is crucial to developing the knowledge and skills necessary to make policy a reality. Training is also a mechanism for addressing compliance problems after implementation.
Training police officers to implement a domestic violence policy or improve their practices cannot be left to advocates alone, nor should it be conducted by police officers alone. A multi-disciplinary team approach not only models partnership and collaboration, but also is more likely to engage the audience. Ideally, the domestic violence training team includes a police officer who can speak to the concerns of responding officers, a prosecutor to cover legal aspects, and a community advocate who can speak to why battered women might act as they do once police get involved.
Information about the characteristics of domestic violence can be interspersed with discussions about initial response, investigation, report writing, officer safety, and arrest procedures. To reinforce the training goals and avoid contradictions, all team members should understand the dynamics of domestic violence, the role and experiences of patrol officers and other participants, and their jurisdiction's legal authority to intervene. Real-life scenarios allow officers to develop a common understanding of what the policy means, how to implement it, and who to consult with questions.
It is critical that police training be conducted within the context of police work. Advocates can count on having an audience that will be blunt and eager for useful information. This is not the time for an extended lecture on the theoretical framework of battering. It will not be well received by participants and is likely to create a barrier that cannot be overcome by the training that follows. It is also critical that instructors be prepared, knowledgeable, and well versed in adult learning and facilitation.
The train-the-trainer curriculum developed by the Federal Law Enforcement Training Center, Domestic Violence: A Rural Law Enforcement Response , begins with an orientation to adult learning and appropriate activities and facilitation techniques. The arrest curriculum available from the California Alliance Against Domestic Violence also includes material on facilitation strategies and overcoming common training problems. The video exercises developed for the course conclude with advice from veteran trainers, almost all of whom at one point describe the stereotypical police audience: everyone clustered at the back of the room, arms crossed or reading the paper. They emphasize the importance of participation versus talking at the audience: "let them teach themselves and each other." Their advice includes:
As one instructor noted, if you do not know the subject and are not prepared, you should not be teaching. "The best curriculum in the world means nothing if the trainer is no good."
Domestic Violence: The Law Enforcement Response was developed by the Duluth Domestic Abuse Intervention Project in 1988 and has been used widely throughout the Untied States. Revised in 1998, it is an example of a comprehensive training format, built on adult learning principles. It includes an instructor's manual and preparation video, student guide, and videotaped scenarios of officers responding to a variety of domestic violence calls. Targeted to patrol officers, it covers the dynamics of domestic violence and the range of police intervention procedures: interviews, determining primary aggression, evidence collection (including strangulation, harassment, and stalking), and report writing.
Many training resources have emerged over the past twenty years as communities have developed domestic violence intervention projects and the Violence Against Women Act and the COPS Office have provided grants. Videos, curricula, and manuals provide training on policy development, victim safety, offender accountability, investigation, and coordinated community response. They address specific problems that have emerged as arrest policies have been implemented, such as inappropriate dual arrests and misunderstanding the concept of primary physical aggressor.
Most state domestic violence coalitions can cite communities in their state that model sound police training. No single curriculum will fit all circumstances, so advocates should be familiar with several models. Introducing a new policy or change in the law may be accomplished best in one format while addressing problems with evidence collection or dual arrests may require a different approach. Training 911 and dispatch operators will be different from training sergeants and other supervisors.
Any curriculum must be adapted to the needs of the
community, the training issues, and state law. By searching
out a variety of models that are well grounded in the
principles of victim safety, offender accountability, and
community change, advocates can more effectively collaborate
with police to develop training that facilitates changes in
policy and practice, as well as addresses specific problems
that emerge with changing police response, such as dual
arrests or incomplete reports.
Battered women's advocates have repeatedly challenged the police to make significant changes in their response to domestic violence. Where they have succeeded, advocates have acted with an understanding of the structure and function of police work, appreciation for the demands on police time and attention, and solid, documented analyses of problems and recommendations for change.
In many communities today, the level of agency dialogue and collaboration, and the extent to which they support battered women, could barely be imagined twenty years ago. Advocates in other communities, however, continue to face entrenched resistance and rampant victim blaming. Throughout the country, advocates are confronted with the daily challenge of putting the needs of battered women first, ahead of criminal justice system demands to process arrests, cases, and convictions.
We have learned that police can be agents of change. They
can reshape institutional policies and practices. They can be
allies to advocates in improving safety for battered women.
Where this has happened, advocates and police have worked
through disagreement and conflict, but they have stayed at
the table, willing to continue the discussion and take risks
in building relationships with one another. As one advocate
observed, "there is no magic potion to pour down people's
throats; it's hard work over a long haul and sometimes
success is measured by everyone being willing to sit in the
same room together."