Created by the Civil Rights Act, the CRS helps local communities mediate conflicts arising from differences in race, color and national origin.
The CRS is the only federal agency in the world dedicated to mediating and providing dispute resolution to identity-based conflicts, Lum said.
Lum was joined by three panelists: Virginia Hall, clergy at Trinity Episcopal Church and caseworker for Shalom Community Center; Rafi Hasan, director of Safe and Civil City; and Jim Kennedy, former director of the IU Police Department, chief of Bloomington Police Department and sheriff of the Monroe County Sheriff’s Department. The panelists discussed cultural and religious diversity and the role law enforcement plays in the community.
Kennedy lauded the efforts of the BPD but said he is concerned with some of their training methods.
“We spend a lot of money, weeks teaching them how to shoot a gun,” he said. “We need to spend more time on how to deal with people.”
Susan A. Burton, executive director of the Community Justice & Mediation Center, said Lum’s experiences enable him to shed light on many controversial issues that can affect the community.
“We don’t want to be another Baltimore or Ferguson,” she said. ”We have a changing community, so it’s our responsibility to try and work together to prevent some of these things from happening.”
The CRS responded to potential hate crimes that occurred in Bloomington in December of 2010, Lum said.
The Chabad House was vandalized and religious texts were defaced. The CRS, with university police and Jewish student leaders created a hate crimes response coalition.
Lum said the tension in America has thickened with the recent murders of unarmed black men.
“It’s become a big national issue from the Trayvon Martin situation in Sanford, Florida, to the Zimmerman trial, to Ferguson and the tragic shooting of Michael Brown, to Baltimore and Freddie Gray,” he said. Lum said the CRS has stealthily intervened in all of these controversies.
“I think of my agency as the Navy SEALs of dispute resolution,” he said. “Get in very quietly, we leave, we’re small, we are mighty. We use flip charts and government-owned Chevrolets instead of Black Hawk helicopters and night goggles.”
