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At Allen Temple Baptist Church, hundreds gathered last month to protest gun violence and build support for Ceasefire. Here, people personally affected by gun violence raise their hands.

With shooting deaths up, Oakland to give violence reduction program a second try

on October 11, 2012

In the span of one day this month, flying bullets left five men dead in the city of Oakland.

The violence grimly highlighted Oakland’s gun violence problem — of the more than 90 people killed here this year, a rate outpacing last year’s, most were shot to death.  “Violence in our city is unacceptable,” said Oakland Police Chief Howard Jordan, speaking to reporters last Thursday about recent homicides. “It will not be tolerated.”

The rise in shootings has prompted city officials and community members to revisit a violence prevention program Oakland tried before but failed to sustain, one that specifically targets offenders with known track records of gun violence.

Under the program, called Operation Ceasefire, those individuals will be told that if they – and the gangs they belong to – stop the shooting and the killing, community and religious organizations will be standing by with job training, education, and other support services.   But if they don’t, law enforcement and prosecutors will crack down on the groups through a variety of tactics, both in and outside of the courtroom.

The plan was tried three years ago in Oakland, but it withered without strong direction. Now city leaders are pledging to try it again, this time with renewed fervor. Jordan has said he expects the program to begin in earnest in about two weeks.

Officials say the initiative, like dozens of similar programs launched around the country, is intended to change the way the city tackles violent crime.  By bringing community members directly into the implementation of the program, officials hope Ceasefire will provide a solution to the gun violence that has become a permanent fixture in the city.

“I want us to be known for more than gun violence,” said Michael McBride, leader of the national anti-violence campaign Lifelines to Healing, who is involved with organizing Ceasefire.

How the program will work

The basic idea behind Ceasefire is that the number of individuals perpetrating Oakland’s gun violence is actually very small, and that most of them are connected to an identifiable violent group. Oakland police Lieutenant LeRonne Armstrong, who is helping organize the program, said he estimates about four to five percent of the city’s population is responsible for most of its violence.

Armstrong said Ceasefire in Oakland will first target 15 such groups in East Oakland.

He said police will identify people who have already been convicted of gun crimes and are part of these violent groups but are out in the community – parolees, people on probation, or other known offenders, he said.

Police will call the targeted individuals to a “neutral” location, like a church or library in the group’s community, instead of a threatening environment like a police station, he said.

Then police will communicate a message to the groups through these individuals that the violence must stop, that the community is on board, and help is available, Armstrong said.

He said probation and parole officers will include the meetings in the terms of parole or probation for the targeted individuals to ensure they will turn up. If the individuals aren’t on probation or parole, police – in conjunction with members of the community or clergy – will go find them.

If the groups do not stop the violence, they will face increased scrutiny from police and the justice system, scrutiny that Armstrong said would vary depending on the groups. For groups that tend to spend time on street corners, increased patrols may be necessary. Other groups tend to spend time indoors, so police will have to try something else, he said.

He declined to say exactly what strategies police will use.

He added that federal agencies, such as the FBI, DEA, ATF, and U.S. Marshals, have also pledged to give attention to noncompliant groups.

“When we leverage those partners, we’re looking to basically do some heavy enforcement,” Armstrong said.

Alameda County Deputy District Attorney John Creighton said prosecutors could increase the penalties offenders potentially face by bringing in the U.S. attorney to prosecute certain crimes and applying stiffer plea bargains for offenders.

“We’re not picking guys that we just don’t like,” Creighton said. “We’re picking guys that have a proven track record of criminal activity.”

Representatives from the police department and mayor’s office declined to say which groups were being targeted or which individuals would be contacted as part of the Ceasefire program.

If the groups and individuals agree to the terms offered to them, and the violence lets up, community and religious organizations will provide job services, vocational services, GED programs and other help, though Armstrong said he could not provide any specifics. He said support would vary from person to person.

“What we try to do is let our case managers figure out what’s best for them,” he said. “They’ll figure out together what’s best for the individual.”

The broad context

Oakland’s model is similar to models that have been credited for dramatically reducing violence in cities like Boston, Cincinnati, and New York. Versions of the program have also been praised by the U.S. Department of Justice and by state agencies that fund local anti-violence programs in California.

Oakland’s program is patterned most closely on that of Boston, where Ceasefire, the brainchild of criminologist and academic David Kennedy, targeted high rates of youth gun violence and murders.

According to a 2001 Department of Justice report evaluating Boston’s program, during the months after Ceasefire’s implementation in 1996, youth homicides dropped from an average of 3.5 to 1.3 per month, a 63 percent reduction. This drop, known as the “Boston Miracle,” spurred the implementation of other programs across the country.

Oakland leaders hope a strong local Ceasefire collaboration between the district attorney’s office, the county probation department, police, city officials, and religious and community organizations will help replicate similar results.

“We do believe that bringing all of our institutions and our services and resources to the table can certainly help with more accountability, more stability, more leadership and more attention being paid to this,” McBride said.

Oversight and technical assistance from California Partnership for Safe Communities, a non-profit violence prevention organization, will cost approximately $95,000, said Reygan Harmon, Mayor Jean Quan’s senior policy adviser on public safety and one of the project managers for Ceasefire. Other funding for the program is already built into the police department’s budget, she said.

“I think it helps cities, certainly cities that have limited resources, better utilize limited resources to better combat issues that impact lives in probably one of the most egregious ways,” Harmon said.

Armstrong said the funding and oversight from the organization is critical to Ceasefire being successful.

“It gives us the experiences that other cities are having, best practices,” he said.

Mixed results

But Ceasefire’s history is a little bit more complex than the apparent success story in Boston in the years after its implementation. Officials in New York and Los Angeles have said that getting all community organizations to work in harmony with the police department and city government can be difficult.

In Boston, where Ceasefire first gained its national reputation, city leaders ended the program in 2000 due to manpower shortages in the police department and other problems, according to a 2008 report from Harvard University.   Afterward, the report found, youth gun violence increased.

Oakland’s first attempt at implementing Ceasefire seemed to display this same dysfunction.

In 2009, the city, under former Mayor Ron Dellums, received a $3 million grant from a now- defunct California agency to reduce gang violence. A resolution authorizing the spending passed unanimously in the city council, and the gears started to turn. Several beats in West Oakland were identified as target areas, according to a 2009 staff report.

But the program foundered. Community members, city and county officials, and the representatives from the police department point to a number of failures that caused the 2009 program to collapse.

According to Creighton, law enforcement and city officials did not allocate enough manpower to find the initial target individuals to communicate the violence prevention message to their respective groups. Imani Community Church pastor George Cummings, who is helping organize faith-based organizations to support the initiative, said the program was doomed partly by unfilled holes in the city staffing that had initially provided leadership.. Harmon said the city council did not provide enough support for the program, and that the community was not fully brought on board.  Armstrong said the program was viewed as mainly a police initiative, something without the backing of the community, undermining its credibility.

They agree that Oakland did not fully commit to the Ceasefire program, and as a result, saw no positive results. This time, however, the program is being retooled, according to a report detailing crime prevention strategies presented to the city council.

Officials are focusing on East Oakland instead of West Oakland this time around, Harmon said. Community leaders seem to be fully involved, as participants at rallies and marches over the last few weeks drawing hundreds have expressed optimism for Ceasefire’s success.

“I’m a real believer in the Ceasefire model for stopping violence, particularly gun violence,” Oakland councilmember Libby Schaaf said at an anti-violence rally last month, when hundreds marched from across the city to downtown Oakland.  “Events like this are a very important part of that strategy where the community unites and sends a very clear message that we will not tolerate violence anymore.”

But Armstrong said the optimism should be guarded, as the program may take time to be successful.

“Quite honestly, will they take the message immediately? We don’t know,” he said. “We’re very hopeful.”

Pendarvis Harshaw contributed to this report.

11 Comments

  1. G. Dog on October 11, 2012 at 12:41 pm

    According to Professor Zimring at Cal, Ceasefire is unproven. Also note that it’s being used in Chicago, which recently had a spate of murders comparable to Oakland that lasted a week.

    The only strategy that has proven successful is the New York Miracle. No one here seems to be aware of it or interested how they did it, but they lowered their violent crime rate by 80% in 4 years. In 1991 it was more violent than Oakland, around 30 murders per year per 1000,000 population, and now is down to 5.5. We are still at 25-30. It’s only mid October and we’re breaking 100 already. And yet I have seen very little interest in what New York did, or they cavalierly dismiss it as irrelevant. Pathetic.



    • westie on October 15, 2012 at 10:28 am

      The New York model was all for hiring Police Officers..upping the force to around 7,000(if I remember the lecture right).. I don’t think that is something that people from here will approve of..



  2. Chris Vernon on October 12, 2012 at 4:19 pm

    I think the article describes “Ceasefire”, as proposed by David Kennedy quite well. It’s not ‘unproven’ – but it is difficult to implement properly. Can Oakland pull if off is a legitimate and open question.

    Besides, the New York City ‘miracle’ relied on Civil Rights intrusions and heavy numbers of police. The first of which would be highly unpopular in Oakland, the second nearly impossible to accomplish.



    • Len Raphael on October 13, 2012 at 12:11 am

      Politicians here are always looking for the miracle cure quick fix you can eat as much chocolate cake and still lose weight solutions to our problems.

      That’s the case whether its our high crime rates or our huge structural fiscal deficit.

      Residents who have abysmally low expections for local government services for almost 4 years, turn off their brains and vote for candidates who spin the best fairy tale with the nicest smile, most attractive family etc.

      There are lots of anti-violence strategies that work to varying extents when they are (as the tootpaste ads would say) ” used in a conscientiously applied program.”

      But as Dr Patricia Bennett of RDA, the firm that is paid to evaluate Measure Y, said in her video’d testimony last June, we don’t have any.

      I’d say we don’t because our programs are patronage driven instead of data driven, Chief Jordan notwithstanding.

      Heck, we don’t even have accurate reliable data to drive with.

      So instead of fixating on the latest and greatest miracle cure for our high crime the way Richard Raya has fixated on Ceasefire, how about sunsetting all our anti-violence programs, and making them reapply. Require them to prove they reduce crime and not just help a few participants improve their life chances. Evaluate them for their effect on reducing crime the way Dr Bennett recommends and says other cities do. Cut the ones that fail and try again.

      Len Raphael
      Candidate for District 1 City Council
      LensForChange.com
      there is a FREE LUNCH at Original Kasper’s Hot Dogs Sunday Oct 21 11am to 3pm



      • Kia Simon on October 18, 2012 at 9:44 pm

        I’m voting for Richard Raya because he supports Cease Fire. If you read the book “Don’t Shoot” by David Kennedy you can judge for yourself whether the program is a fairy tale. For me it was a revelation. A logical and effective solution that can end the cycle of violence.

        Len’s suggestion that we should stop all our anti-violence programs, evaluate them, and reinstate those that are effective, sounds really dangerous to me. The most effective program administrators will likely find a new job before we get around to hiring them back. And it’s a way to waste time when we could be cutting homicides in Oakland by 60%. Those are our Oakland kids we’d be saving.

        Len, your’e not making it into my top three picks. Now, if you’ve read the book, I look forward to your rebuttal. If you haven’t, get your butt to the library and check it out!

        Kia Simon



  3. […] initiatives include Operation Ceasefire, a plan that singles out certain violent offenders and gives them a choice between receiving […]



  4. […] which is focused in East Oakland, and we wanted to build this onto that,” she says, referring to the city’s latest attempt at reducing gun violence, a program that singles out certain known offenders and offers them a choice between either […]



  5. […] private meeting, described for reporters in a news conference this week, officially kicked off Oakland’s new version of Operation Ceasefire, a nationally renowned violence prevention strategy that targets a small number of violent […]



  6. Sf2oak on October 27, 2012 at 1:32 pm

    The police chief says “violence won’t be tolerated” but really in my o



  7. Sf2oak on October 27, 2012 at 1:56 pm

    Police chief says ” violence won’t be tolerated” but IMO crime must not be tolerated at all. There are in the thousands of serious criminal violations from illegal dumping ( which means to one who dumps we are a dump) to robberies, burglaries, assaults these must be prosecuted to a much higher level. I think it pretty out of line for 15 known criminals to come in and negotiate w police and not be arrested. What is there to negotiate? How low on the crime ladder they can be a criminal? We need a strong forceful law and order because we are overrun w criminal activity. We need coordinated efforts to reduce crime & I applaud the efforts to coordinate, FBI ATF CHP and all manners of law enforcement ( remember Capone was convicted on tax evasion, so by what ever means necessary). But really enough with coddling the criminal, LE must show strength and citizens must have and demand reduced crime.



  8. […] of the Case Gang last Friday in a large, multi-agency operation that was part of Oakland’s Operation Ceasefire. The nationally-known violence reduction program gives offenders with histories of gun violence a […]



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