Project Fort Defiance - Applications for Communities

1. Project Fort Defiance
Bridging the Divide
How Veterans, Social Science, and Community Builders can foster fruitful relationships between local
populations and local police, as well as other outside actors
John Kirbow Bill Knight William Keltie

2. How Veterans, Social Science, and Community Builders can foster fruitful relationships between local
populations and local police, as well as other outside actors
From the inner city to the country side, to the condo and high-rise, all of us have more to lose by a continuance of
the staggering failure of conversation we have seen over the years.
 We also have far more to gain through a shared understanding. Issues of genuine social concern – including volatile unrest
within many American communities through decades of misunderstanding – are part of a Zero Sum Game. Worse, in fact, it is
usually a no-win situation. It is in everyone’s interest to get to a NonZero point – that is, a place where everyone is better off.*
 This is where we can map the Human Terrain and help negotiate the nuances of the cultural and social landscape, in a way that
mitigates misunderstanding - and by extension, risk and cost. Cost to lives, property, public relations, community rapport,
greater trust, and human relationships.

3. Navigating the Human Terrain: Small but effective Ground Teams, working with and alongside residents
across the Community
Nonlethal Defense Toolkit: This is an umbrella for the non-lethal ‘best practices and lessons learned’ from our elite Special Operations and
Civil Affairs personnel in Iraq and Afghanistan.* Key traits include:
•Small teams (veterans, social science experts, and community builders) to conduct
rapid ‘area assessment’, * build a local rapport as well as broker local support and
information channels (using cultural expertise, a knowledge of psychological
engagement, and research into the area).
•Assessment framework aimed at attaining a relevant and intimate understanding
of behavioral realities, to include how communication and cooperation specifically
occurs.
•‘Human and cultural layers’ as well as the ‘civil terrain’ can be assessed with
existing toolkits used by our veterans, as well as by many community builders

4. Navigating the Human Terrain, between local populations and outside actors – Participatory Mapping
Participatory Mapping has a solid tack record, is very effective and well-received by local populations, and works
across a wide range of cultures and levels of literacy (https://commdev.org/files/1539_file_H2.pdf ). It was effectively demonstrated in the
Niger Delta’s Akassa region (http://www.brookings.edu/research/papers/2014/05/community-driven-development-nigeria-niger-delta) and assessed by a Brookings
study and report, with amazing results.
Its methods of ‘local participation in mapping problems and solutions’ -by local residents of a village, town or urban city - have been used
across various locations in the US, Latin America, Asia, and other places (https://www.ifad.org/documents/10180/d1383979-4976-4c8e-ba5d-53419e37cbcc ). Despite its
inclusive and empowering nature, it is rarely replicated in a truly local, community-driven way. We can change this.
Participatory Mapping is an inclusive, bottom-up, locally driven approach to engaging
communities
It can look at how residents view outside entities / actors, including local police forces
• Current and historical perceptions, across groups (age, race, demographic location, etc.)
• When present, the underlying reasons for the negative sentiment or posture toward
police - for example, the intangible, often 'hidden' layer of grievances and frustrations.

5. Useful Information Gathered:
Any of the relevant psychological,
social, cultural or economic factors
at play among the local population
Includes any
historical grievances and perceived
stigmas that should be discussed
 Common example – poorer residents
being excluded from the process of
development & gentrification by
outsiders, with 'little regard for the
people within the community'
 History of relations with police, and
perceptions held by different groups
(historical, social) across age and
other demographics
Shared ‘Community cloud’ database
(community-owned) for data storage and
retrieval, as we build this community map
together

6. Atmospherics – An unrivaled, cost-effective and rapid way to get real-time data on population concerns
Atmospherics was a tool developed by elite members of the Special Operations and Defense community in Afghanistan, for rapidly
assessing the true concerns and sentiments of local areas and populations. It is a peaceful, friendly, and often life-saving toolkit*
which enables us to visualize – through density / heat maps, data regression tables, and charts - what people are truly concerned
about. It helps take the ‘pulse’ of an area very quickly.
 It showed us why certain areas were unfriendly to coalition forces
 Another example: when we assumed (as outsiders looking in) that a certain population segment was concerned about water, they were
actually more concerned with healthcare
Atmospherics would enable us to visualize the sentiment of a local population, including the areas, frequencies and concentrations
of certain concerns and priorities in a rapid, cost-effective way.
 It aggregates hundreds of small reports together, using regressive data analytics.
 The output is a visualization of densities of population attitudes and discernable patterns.
 This often yields insights into the local area in ways that traditional polling cannot.
This enables us incorporate what is known as Zero-Base Design – in other words, it allows us to engage problems with an open
mind and minimal assumptions, using social science and an immersion with the population to discover the reality around us, from
the bottom-up.

7. Project Costs
We are asking for $5,000 for 2-3 months of community mapping.
I will volunteer as much of my time as I can
Can act as a stipend to subsidize team members as needed
Can fund 2 week initial Atmospherics Assessment
Team – Myself, 1-2 Atmospherics managers, 1-2 seasoned community builders, and a senior social science advisor. We will
work alongside the community and its residents and NGOs / CBOs, as well as with local police departments as appropriate.

8. Clients and Stakeholders
This process is sustainable, by way of our veterans – as well as the social science used in the process – adapting to different neighborhoods and communities.
It is a bottom-up, replicable process!
Local governments, Nonprofit funds, and Venture philanthropists are the official clients. However, those served – the true clients – are the communities,
their residents, the police forces that serve them, and our returned veterans who want to find new pathways to meaningful service.
 Local communities flourish from the bottom up, when properly given a dignifying voice to their problems and made part of the process of finding a solution
 Police are people, like us - most have families, want to do their job, and want the tools to better understand the populations they are working with
 Veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan come home and want to stay in the fight, serving their communities in a meaningful way. Because of their unique skillset working in small units in
complex, challenging and culturally diverse environments, they can make a difference. Working with seasoned community builders, lifetime residents, local leaders, and social science
experts, they can help be the bridge between the community and the police.
This project mitigates risk, and it fosters trust and relationships. It facilitates respectable dialogues with the local population, in an inclusive and dignified manner. This is true empowerment for
everyone involved. This is how we get to a NonZero Point - a Win for communities, residents, local governments, local businesses, and neighborhood police forces.