The city of Chelsea

created the Conflict

Intervention Unit to

find out if individuals

from the community

could be trained to

help people solve the

conflicts that often

escalate into assaults

or litigation. The

experiment worked.

The program has

saved the city

thousands of dollars

and hundreds of

patrol hours.

Chelsea, Massachusetts: A City

Helps Its Diverse People Get Along

By Chadwick Bash, Maria Amato, and Michele Sacks, BJA

Sammy Mojica’s job is to make angry

people happy. Chelsea, Massachusetts,

a small, crowded city 2 miles north of

downtown Boston, pays him to intervene in

those intensely personal neighbor-againstneighbor disputes that have a way of turning

ugly and sending otherwise nice people to

court or jail. 

Mojica operates Chelsea’s Conflict

Intervention Unit (CIU), and he and the

other 36,000 people who live in the city

face some big-city problems. Chelsea is the

poorest city in Massachusetts. Nearly half of

the city’s children under the age of 4 live in

poverty. Chelsea leads the Boston region in

unemployment, has the state’s highest crime

rate, and is home to an estimated 10,000

undocumented Hispanic and Southeast

Asian immigrants. These problems are compounded by the fact that Chelsea’s population is squeezed into fewer than 3 square

miles. More than 30 percent of the population lives in one 10-block area of cramped,

rundown dwellings.

That the people here argue and fight, call

the police, and take one another to court is

no surprise; people everywhere do. But in

Chelsea, keeping low-level civil disputes

from escalating into violence and lawsuits

is much more difficult because neighbors

speak different languages and do not realize that their behavior might offend the

cultural norms of the family next door. 

The city of Chelsea created CIU as an

experiment. Ed Flynn, the city’s former

chief of police, wanted to find out if individuals from the community could be

trained to help people solve the types of

conflicts that often escalate into assaults or

The crowded city of Chelsea, Massachusetts—the

Commonwealth’s poorest—sits just 2 miles from

downtown Boston.

U.S. Department of Justice

Office of Justice Programs

Bureau of Justice Assistance

January 2000

erspectives Onsite Visits, Case Histories, and State 

and Local Innovations From the 

Bureau of Justice Assistance

ractitioner

Nancy E. Gist, Director

Bulletin From the Field

DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE

OFF ICE OF JUSTICE PROGRAMS

BJA NI J OJJDP BJS OVC
2

Bulletin From the Field: Practitioner Perspectives

This series is dedicated to the exploration of vital issues in criminal justice program development and management. Case studies highlight the work of progressive, innovative people and programs in state and local criminal

justice systems. Although a case study may include a detailed description of the operational aspects of a program,

it is not a scientific program evaluation. Rather, it is a document designed to explore the interaction of factors

such as collaboration, politics, resources, culture, and others that play a part in successful public management.

litigation. At the same time, Flynn

hoped to improve the quality of life in

the city’s poorest neighborhoods and

free police officers’ time for crime

problems.

The program, Flynn said, “acknowledged the reality that the criminal

justice system is a blunt instrument

with limited ability to deal with ongoing neighborhood disputes.”

According to Pat Ryan, Chelsea’s

Director of Administration, before

CIU was developed the Chelsea

Police Department talked about finding ways to help people solve their

own problems. But the reality was

that Chelsea officers were still pulling

up to the same doorsteps week after

week to listen to the same complaints

about barking dogs and unruly 

children.

The experiment worked. Of the 111

disputes CIU mediated from May

1998 through August 1999, only 5

have gone to court. The program has

saved the Chelsea police department

thousands of dollars and hundreds of

patrol hours. Officers who were initially skeptical of the program now

refer cases to CIU nearly every day.

And most important, CIU has

reduced crime and racial tension in

minority communities by giving residents a peaceful way to settle disputes without involving the police or

the courts. 

Chelsea City Manager Guy Santigate,

a native of the city and son of Italian

immigrants, believes CIU engages

people who have felt alienated from

the police and other government

institutions. “CIU is giving our citizens a new perspective on how to

handle conflict,” he said.

The Old Chelsea: 

A Lot of Conflict,

Little Cooperation 

That this city is even thinking about

quality-of-life issues amazes people

who have lived through Chelsea’s

recent history. At the beginning of the

decade, the city was completely

mired in conflict. Problems ran rampant from the neighborhood streets

right up through a demoralized police

department and a corrupt mayor’s

office. Everybody in Chelsea, it

seemed, was fighting a lonely battle

to survive. 

In local government, the city’s severe

economic, political, and financial

hardships prompted the Massachusetts

legislature to place Chelsea into

receivership in 1991. It was the first

time since the Depression that a state

government had taken such drastic

action against a municipality.1

In Chelsea’s streets, conflict was

fueled by ethnic tensions that began

flaring in the mid-1970s when waves

of immigrants dramatically shifted the

ethnic makeup of the city’s population. One of Massachusetts’ original

gateway communities, Chelsea was a

blue-collar suburb of Irish, Italian,

and Polish immigrants. By 1998,

Chelsea’s population had become

more than 40 percent Hispanic and

10 percent Asian and AfricanAmerican. Students now speak 39

languages in Chelsea’s public school

system, and 75 percent of its student

population are minority students. 

The Chelsea Police Department was

slow to respond to this demographic

shift, and officers’ relationships with

the city’s minority communities deteriorated to the point that a riot broke

out against the police in 1983. The

department had no Spanish-speaking

officers on its force until 1992. Only

recently, as new lines of communication opened between law enforcement

and the community, have tensions 

dissipated.

But receivership and the possibility

of annexation by Boston forced

Chelsea’s residents to become more

involved in finding solutions to the

city’s crime, poverty, education, and

housing problems. Residents and city

officials organized neighborhood

crime watch groups, calmed unrest in

minority neighborhoods through community policing programs and the hiring of bilingual officers, opened a

local youth center, and formed a partnership with Boston University to help

manage Chelsea’s public schools.
Chelsea, Massachusetts: A City Helps Its Diverse People Get Along

3

Getting the Program

Started and Building

Trust

In September 1997, the Bureau of

Justice Assistance (BJA), a grantmaking agency of the U.S. Department

of Justice, awarded $75,000 to the

Chelsea Police Department to start

CIU. The unit, which consisted of a

director and an assistant director,

began accepting cases in May 1998.

From the outset, CIU was designed to

address noncriminal disputes. It was

not designed to handle domestic violence, child abuse and neglect, or

divorce cases. 

BJA’s award covered 90 percent of

the staff’s salaries and fringe benefits.

The city of Chelsea contributed inkind support that provided office

space, paid overhead costs, equipped

the staff with radios for use in the

field, and sponsored training in mediation for city workers and community

leaders. The Chelsea Housing

Authority offered office and mediation

space at each public housing site, and

the Health and Human Services

Department made staff available from

the city’s refugee program to provide

translation services in Spanish,

Vietnamese, and Cambodian. 

The first important test for CIU was

whether it would be embraced by officers in the Chelsea Police Department

and the Chelsea Housing Authority.

Officers responding to nuisance calls

would be the most likely source of

referrals to the program, but they

wouldn’t refer cases to CIU if they

didn’t view the unit as a viable

option. 

Mojica and CIU’s first director, Ginny

Burnham, introduced the program to

Sammy Mojica (center), Chelsea’s conflict intervention specialist, talks to a resident who stopped

him on the street seeking help in a landlord-tenant dispute.

Chelsea’s police officers at roll call in

spring 1998, and the officers were

skeptical. An officer who was on the

force at the time recalled that many

of her colleagues were concerned that

CIU’s approach was not legitimate

police work. The officers also didn’t

like the idea of asking for help in

cases they felt they should be able to

handle on their own.

Convincing officers that the program

could make their jobs easier was critical to the program’s survival. In

1998, when Rafael Hernandez took

over the department as the state’s

first Hispanic police chief, CIU was

struggling to get up and running.

Hernandez’ predecessor, Ed Flynn,

was the program’s early driving force

and his departure to become chief of

police in Arlington County, Virginia,

delayed CIU’s implementation. That

changed as Hernandez and Capt.

Donald Robitile, both of whom were

committed to the idea of using trained

civilian mediators, pushed the

department to incorporate the unit

into its daily operations.

Even with the support of police management, Chelsea’s officers were

wary of referring cases to civilians

until Burnham and Mojica gained

their trust. “Our officers cooperate

with the program,” Capt. Robitile

said, “because Sammy is very diligent about letting them know the

outcome of the cases. Without that

trust, this program wouldn’t work.”

Mojica estimates that 70 to 80 percent

of officers in the department now refer

disputes to the unit, and the department allows dispatch to track Mojica

on interventions to ensure his safety.

Chelsea police officers assigned to

elementary, middle, and high schools

are very supportive of the program, as

are the department’s officers assigned

to domestic violence and child abuse

cases.

Forming a Referral

Network

When Chelsea formed the Conflict

Intervention Unit, the city didn’t
4

Bulletin From the Field: Practitioner Perspectives

launch a mass media campaign to

publicize the program’s services.

Doing so, Ryan said, would have

overwhelmed CIU’s small staff.

Instead, CIU focused on developing

relationships with city agencies such

as the Chelsea Housing Authority

and the Chelsea Health and Human

Services Department that serve populations with the greatest need for conflict intervention.

The city also sponsored training in

mediation for a cross-section of city

agencies that refer disputes to the

police: animal control, public housing, building inspection, parking,

water and power companies, senior

citizen centers, and human rights and

refugee advocates. The training not

only increased awareness of the unit

throughout the city, it also gave these

agencies the tools to defuse conflicts

before they escalated.

Paul McCarthy is the director of

Public Safety at the Chelsea Housing

Authority, and he knows firsthand

how quick some tenants in Chelsea’s

public housing are to fight. “Friction

is inevitable,” McCarthy said, “when

people of different cultures are

crowded together like this.” At least

70 percent of the calls he and other

members of the housing police

respond to are nuisance calls, often 

at the same addresses.

In the past, when a dispute became

hostile and potentially violent, it was

next to impossible for a public housing manager to intervene and not to

be accused of taking a side. Now

when residents want to beat each

other up or go to court, McCarthy can

call someone who is not a police officer and not an employee of the

Housing Authority.

Mojica learned quickly that this perception of neutrality is the single

most important factor in the process

of getting people to cooperate with

one another. “When I go to someone’s

house, they don’t talk to me the same

way they would a cop,” he said.

Christopher Myers, the Chelsea

Housing Authority’s director of

Housing Management, believes the

benefit of having mediators available

to public housing residents is much

greater than bringing peace to one

floor of an apartment building. The

most important result of ending these

quarrels, he said, is raising the quality of life for everyone in Chelsea’s

public housing system.

Diana’s Story

Diana is a quiet woman who moved

into one of Chelsea’s housing developments 2 years ago with her 3-yearold child. Almost immediately, she

became the target of harassment by

the woman living next door, Amy.2

The two had never met. Yet for some

reason unknown to Diana, Amy

yelled obscenities at her, tried to pick

fights, and even tried to hit Diana

with her car as she crossed the street. 

After 2 years, Amy’s behavior was so

unpredictable that Diana lived in

constant fear. She felt torn over how

to handle the situation. Diana was

The perception of neutrality is

the single most important factor

in the process of getting people

to cooperate with one another.

afraid to confront Amy, and she

feared she might be evicted for causing trouble if she went to the housing

manager. She was reluctant to call the

police, believing she would drag her

neighbors into the conflict and into

court. What Diana really needed was

someone who could find a way to get

Amy to talk without antagonizing her.

Finally, a neighbor suggested that she

ask CIU for help. The first time

Mojica called Amy, she hung up on

him, but he kept calling. Slowly, he

gained her trust and made her realize

that without mediation Diana would

be forced to go to the police or take

the case to court. 

Amy could not speak English well, so

Mojica served as a translator at the

meeting. Diana would say something

in English, Mojica would translate it

into Spanish, Amy would respond in

Spanish, and Mojica would translate

it back to English. This process went

on for hours. 

At first, Amy refused to cooperate.

She would not explain her behavior.

But by the end of the session, she

conceded that Diana had done nothing to prompt her hostility. Amy said

that she sometimes gets mad at her

children and takes it out on other

people. Diana just happened to be

the other person. 

Eventually, they reached an agreement and signed a contract drafted by

Mojica. The contract was simple. It

stated that the two women did not

know each other and had no reason to

have problems, now or in the future.

The contract stipulated that they stay

away from each other and respect

each other’s property. Since that day,

Diana and Amy haven’t talked, but
Chelsea, Massachusetts: A City Helps Its Diverse People Get Along

5

they haven’t had any problems either.

They stay away from each other, and

when they pass each other on the

street, each woman behaves in a civil

manner.

Diana believes that CIU works

because Mojica is serious but friendly

and well liked in the community. “He

does not push mediation on you and

is really patient, and after the mediation he makes you feel secure by

making frequent followup calls and

visits,” Diana said.

For Diana, the best thing about CIU

was that she and Amy had a safe,

neutral environment in which to sit

down and talk face-to-face. Going

through the police or the courts, she

said, would have been much more

confrontational, drawn out, and

expensive. She left the mediation

feeling as if she had just come out 

of a counseling session. “I felt so

relieved, like I wasn’t closed in anymore. The courts are stressful. Had

we taken this to court, I would have

left with little relief and a lot of hostile feelings,” Diana explained.

The Bottom Line: Is

CIU Worth Its Cost?

Between May 1998 and August 1999,

the unit responded to 111 referrals.

According to the Chelsea Police

Department, having an officer respond

to these types of disputes costs an

average of $150 per visit. If the police

had been called to intervene in the

111 cases the CIU has handled, the

cost, at minimum, would have been

nearly $17,000. This figure is likely

much too low, though, because it does

not take into account that many of

these disputes may have required

repeated police visits.

In comparison, CIU staff needed 

$43 per case, or less than $4,800, to

mediate the 111 cases in which they

intervened. Accordingly, it cost the

city of Chelsea at least $107 less per

case to have CIU, rather than the

police, respond to these disputes.

The most important benefits of CIU

are difficult to calculate. Because

CIU helps get to the root of a problem

before it requires litigation or grows

into criminal conduct, the program

saves its participants court costs,

legal fees, lost wages, medical costs,

babysitting fees, and a host of other

hidden expenses. CIU also prevents

significant costs to the Chelsea criminal justice system by providing an

inexpensive alternative to lawsuits.

Each time a dispute is mediated out

of court, all of the costs of hearing a

case—from the judge’s salary to the

electricity running the courtroom’s

lights—are avoided.

Why Is CIU Working

in Chelsea?

Chelsea’s city manager, chief of

police, and director of administration

were all asked the same question: Is

there something special about Chelsea

that made this program succeed?

Their answers were the same: No.

They believe that a team of intervention specialists could have success in

any community, regardless of size or

ethnic makeup. They cautioned, however, that for an intervention unit to

be successful, a community must

ensure that its program has the following fundamental elements:

◆ Rapport with the community.

Chelsea’s CIU staff work and live

in the community they serve. It

has been vitally important, for

example, that Mojica understands

the language and customs of

Chelsea’s Hispanic community.

“The hardest part of my job is

finding ways to get people to talk,”

Children play in Chelsea’s Quigley Park, a site once feared in the neighborhood as a hangout for

drug dealers.
6

Bulletin From the Field: Practitioner Perspectives

Mojica said. “People won’t tell

their story to someone they don’t

trust.” 

◆ The right staff. Recruiting the

right people to serve as mediators

has been crucial to CIU’s success

in Chelsea. According to Mojica, a

successful mediator must have

excellent listening skills and a

willingness to help people make

healthy decisions for themselves.

“To do this job right,” he said,

“you can’t make choices for other

people. They must believe in the

agreement.” 

◆ Flexibility. When police officers

respond to noncriminal disputes,

their options are limited. A typical

police officer has little time to

devote to a nuisance call. If no

crime had been committed, the

best he or she can hope to do is

calm people down and refer them

to counseling and health and

human service agencies. Chelsea’s

intervention specialists are paid

to do what a busy police officer

cannot: find a time and a place

that are convenient to the disputing parties and hammer out an

agreement.

◆ Independence from the police.

Although CIU works out of an

office at the Chelsea Police

Department, the unit is an independent group. Mojica drives his

own car and wears street clothes.

As a result, people still view him

as a friend from the neighborhood.

This independence has been critical to gaining people’s trust in

Chelsea’s poorest neighborhoods.

◆ Independence from the

courts. This program works

because it is an alternative to litigation. Mojica has found that people are most often motivated to

reach an agreement by their desire

to keep disputes out of court.

◆ Feedback. For CIU to be a legitimate option for officers when they

are called to intervene in a dispute, they need to know that the

program works. “Officers need

feedback,” Capt. Robitile said,

“for their peace of mind. They

need to know that the intervention

unit will do something when they

call.”

◆ Followup. In most cases, Mojica

knows that working out an agreement is only the beginning of his

involvement. To make sure the

parties don’t backslide, he makes

weekly phone calls or drops by for

a visit. “If you don’t follow up with

people,” Mojica said, “conflict

intervention won’t work.”

CIU’s Future

In fiscal year (FY) 2000, BJA will

supplement the city of Chelsea’s

award to expand training in conflict

resolution to more community agencies and residents. The city of

Chelsea is committed to the program

and will provide more than half

($42,550) of its operating costs in

2000. Moreover, Chelsea is developing a strategy to sustain the program

once federal funds have been

exhausted.

CIU’s biggest challenge is to reach

more people than it does now with

one intervention specialist. The program will truly mirror Chelsea’s

diverse communities when its staff

includes women and incorporates the

backgrounds and languages of the

city’s most recent immigrants into it. 

One way to meet this challenge is to

train groups of community residents

and public housing residents to serve

as mediators. In FY 2000, building

on CIU’s successful collaboration

with the Chelsea Housing Authority,

CIU staff will begin an effort to teach

all new housing residents how to

manage conflict within their homes

and with their neighbors. CIU also

plans to establish offices at each

housing development to make mediators available to residents twice a

month.

By its most basic measure, CIU is an

effective program. It has reduced

calls for police service in civil disputes. But the program is making a

bigger impact on people’s lives than

on the police department’s budget.

Among the residents of Chelsea’s

poorest neighborhoods, CIU is confirming a growing feeling that the

Chelsea city government is working to

improve the quality of their lives. 
Chelsea, Massachusetts: A City Helps Its Diverse People Get Along

7

Notes

1. In 1994, a revitalized Chelsea

adopted a new city charter that gave

policy and legislative authority to an

11-member city council led by a city

manager. Under this new government,

Chelsea pursued an aggressive economic development plan, adopted the

city’s first capital improvement plan,

completed a $110 million school

project, renegotiated labor agreements, restructured city agencies,

and added new administrative leadership in key staff positions.

2. Diana and Amy’s names have been

changed to protect their privacy.

For More Information 

For more information about the Conflict

Intervention Unit in Chelsea,

Massachusetts, contact:

Sammy Mojica

Conflict Intervention Unit

Chelsea Police Department

180 Crescent Avenue

Chelsea, MA 02150

617–889–8670

For more information about conflict

resolution and community mediation,

contact:

National Association for 

Community Mediation

1527 New Hampshire Avenue NW.

Washington, DC 20036–1206

202–667–9700

E-mail: nafcm@nafcm.org

World Wide Web: www.nafcm.org

Acknowledgments 

The Bureau of Justice Assistance

would like to thank the City of

Chelsea and the Chelsea Police

Department for their cooperation in

researching and writing this bulletin. In particular, we would like to

acknowledge the efforts of Sammy

Mojica, Conflict Intervention

Specialist, City of Chelsea; Pat

Ryan, Director of Administration,

City of Chelsea; and Pam Monzione,

Director of Grant Administration,

City of Chelsea. The preparation of

this article would not have been

possible without their assistance.

BJA would also like to thank Guy

Santigate, City Manager, Chelsea;

Rafael Hernandez, Chief of Police,

Chelsea Police Department; and

Capt. Donald Robitile, Chelsea

Police Department, for their time

and valuable input. 

The Bureau of Justice Assistance is

a component of the Office of Justice

Programs, which also includes the

Bureau of Justice Statistics, the 

National Institute of Justice, the

Office of Juvenile Justice and 

Delinquency Prevention, and the

Office for Victims of Crime. 

NCJ 179866

For more information about BJA’s

Practitioner Perspectives Series, 

contact:

Bureau of Justice Assistance

810 Seventh Street NW.

Washington, DC 20531

202–514–5947

World Wide Web: 

www.ojp.usdoj.gov/BJA

To order BJA publications or to find

out more about BJA programs, contact:

Bureau of Justice Assistance 

Clearinghouse

P.O. Box 6000

Rockville, MD 20849–6000

1–800–688–4252

E-mail: askncjrs@ncjrs.org

World Wide Web: www.ncjrs.org

Clearinghouse staff are available

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