By The California Partnership for Safe Communities (CPSC)

In April of 2023, the CPSC was contacted by the office of Mayor Sheng Thao to discuss the effectiveness of the current Ceasefire strategy, specific to the internal workings of the city. In essence, Mayor Thao wanted to know how and whether the City of Oakland was doing its part to implement the strategy effectively. She referred to a recommendation that was provided to the City of Oakland in a 2021 Problem Analysis conducted by Dr. Anthony Braga of the University of Pennsylvania and Dr. Lisa Barao of Westfield State University, where they stated: “It is recommended that the City of Oakland closely audits the resources allocated and activities of the organizations responsible for implementing Ceasefire. This audit will assess whether the challenges of the pandemic and demands for police reform have diminished focus. The audit should determine whether each key component (communications, service provision, law enforcement) has the necessary focus, quality, and scale to reduce the violence problem the city now faces.4” As a result of this recommendation and those discussions, Mayor Thao requested the CPSC to audit the current Ceasefire strategy. This audit is limited to the Ceasefire strategy and to the role of the Oakland Police Department, Department of Violence Prevention, and how they work with  their partners5, who are funded to provide services for those clients. This audit does not examine the role of community partners such as moral voices or outside agencies. Objectives of the audit: 1. To determine if the Ceasefire strategy is being implemented effectively. 2. To determine if Ceasefire is the appropriate strategy for Oakland’s current gun violence challenges. 3. To understand what is currently driving gun violence in Oakland. This includes an updated brief problem analysis that captures Oakland’s shootings and homicides from January 2023 to September 30, 2023.

The Partnership, 2023. 57p.

By Anthony A. Braga,  Lisa M. Barao. Gregory Zimmerman,  Rod K. Brunson,  Andrew V. Papachristos, George Wood,  Chelsea Farrell

The City of Oakland, California, has long suffered from very high levels of serious violence. According to the FBI’s Uniform Crime Reports, Oakland’s homicide rate (31.8 per 100,000) was almost 6.8 times higher than the national homicide rate (4.7 per 100,000) in 2012. That year, the City of Oakland engaged the California Partnership for Safe Communities (CPSC) to help design and implement a focused deterrence program to reduce serious gun violence. The CPSC collaborated with the Oakland Police Department (OPD) on ongoing problem analysis research to understand the underlying nature of gun violence in Oakland. The OPD led an interagency Ceasefire enforcement group comprised of federal, state, and county criminal justice agencies. The broader Oakland Ceasefire Partnership included the Mayor’s Office, social service agencies led by the Human Services Department, and community leaders from local organizations such as Oakland Community Organizations (OCO). The Oakland Ceasefire program closely followed the key elements of a focused deterrence Group Violence Reduction Strategy (GVRS). Briefly, GVRS programs seek to change offender behavior by understanding underlying crime‐producing dynamics and conditions that sustain recurring crime problems, and implementing a blended strategy of law enforcement, community mobilization, and social service actions. The Oakland Ceasefire program was fully implemented in early 2013. Between 2010 and 2017, total Oakland shooting victimizations peaked at 710 in 2011 (93 gun homicide victims and 617 non-fatal shooting victims) and decreased by 52.1 percent to a low of 340 in 2017 (63 gun homicide victims and 277 non-fatal shooting victims). The impact evaluation was designed to determine whether the Ceasefire intervention was associated with this steep decline in serious gun violence and assess how Ceasefire partners and community leaders perceived the implementation of the strategy.

Unpublished report, 2019.   113p.