Ericka Cruz Guevarra: I’m Ericka Cruz Guevarra, and welcome to the Bay. Local news to keep you rooted. Cities around the country have struggled with an uptick in gun violence since the pandemic, and Black and Latino communities were hit hardest by the end of last year, though, that violence was finally beginning to slow in major cities like Detroit and Saint Louis.
Ericka Cruz Guevarra: But not in Oakland, where 100 homicides were reported in 2023. What exactly fuels this violence is a complex question, but Oakland is offering one possible reason the breakdown of its marquee violence prevention program known as Operation Ceasefire.
Abené Clayton: Operation ceasefire was one of the prime groups that was credited with driving gun violence down by nearly half, about 46%.
Ericka Cruz Guevarra: Last month, a new audit requested by Mayor Shane Tao concluded the city of Oakland had made a mistake in letting Operation Cease Fire fizzle out today. The success and failure of Oakland’s operation cease fire.
Abené Clayton: The year that Operation Cease Fire started in Oakland, 126 people were killed, which is a multi-decade high for the city.
Ericka Cruz Guevarra: Abené Clayton is a reporter with the Guardian’s Guns and Lives in America project.
Abené Clayton: In 2012, Oakland launched Operation Cease Fire, and the goal was to use the intelligence that the police get from patrolling and arresting and kind of combine that with the opportunities in kind of community care that come from faith leaders, local activists, violence prevention professionals to target the very small amount of the population in Oakland, maybe less than 1% of people who are responsible for the majority of the gun violence at the time.
Ericka Cruz Guevarra: So it sounds like a particularly violent year in Oakland when Operation Cease Fire kind of took off. And you mentioned a few different groups there faith leaders, community leaders, and the police. Can you talk about who ran Operation Cease Fire and how did this work exactly? What did it mean to target these individuals in the community who were responsible for gun violence?
Abené Clayton: So it was a multi-pronged approach. Operation Ceasefire detail. Police would review shootings every week. They would discuss patterns if they noticed that a particular individual was killed. That could heighten the risk of retaliation. If there was a kind of concentration of shootings over the past week, they knew which groups, which individuals were most responsible for those most recent shootings.
Abené Clayton: At the same time, you had faith leaders and you had community workers who were organizing these things called ceasefire night walks, right where they would walk through some of the most pop in, if you will, areas usually in East or West Oakland with signs calling for peace, being these kind of visible ambassadors of violence prevention in their communities.
Abené Clayton: These two groups would kind of emerge during these meetings called Collins, which I think is one of the kind of most well known parts of the ceasefire strategy. Police would make contact with somebody, invite them to a place, usually a community center or a church where, as I mentioned, again, faith leaders and other violence prevention folks, people who may have been formerly incarcerated and are now out of prison, would all meet with the person, ask them to stop the shooting, let them know like we see you, we know what’s going on and this isn’t the lifestyle that you want.
Abené Clayton: And if the person was open, you know there were opportunities to link them with resources then and kind of get the ball rolling on whatever services they needed, you know, housing, job training, getting your GED.
Abené Clayton: There was always food, which I feel like is a really underestimated part of violence prevention. But every single violence interrupter I know says, if you’re going to have a meeting where you’re bringing in folks who you believe are part of the violence, make sure there are solid meals there that they can take home to their families. So there were several things that were built in to beginning the launch of Operation Ceasefire to make sure that trust was established and that that could lead to buy in for people who are genuinely hard to like, wrap your arms around somehow.
Ericka Cruz Guevarra: How successful was it at stopping gun violence in the city in its prime.
Abené Clayton: Pre-pandemic, between 2012 and really, 2019? Operation ceasefire was one of the prime groups that was credited with driving gun violence down by nearly half, about 46% in 2012, when ceasefire was launched, 126 people were killed and then within five years, that number went down to 72. In criminology, and when talking about gun violence, there’s a lot of hedging and a lot of hesitance to point to any one program. However, research does point to significant changes brought on by the program. I’m sure that’s not the reason for all of the lives that weren’t lost in those five years, but I don’t think we can undersell that. It was an important program.
Ericka Cruz Guevarra: So pretty successful program, it seems. When did things start to take a turn though for Operation Ceasefire?
Abené Clayton: So based on the audit that was produced, at the behest of Mayor Shengtao, there are kind of three main things that were brought up in 2016. There was a shift from the person based approach. And what I mean by that is going directly to people. And there was a change to place based prevention. Or officers would be in a general area or a particular neighborhood that was a hot spot at the moment. It’s kind of unclear what the specific impact was, but it does sound like it made it a little bit harder to reach the individuals who were responsible for the majority of the gun violence. And then fast forward to 2020, the pandemic hit and another major part of ceasefire strategy.
Abené Clayton: The in-person interaction was all but snuffed out. And we saw this with a number of violence prevention organizations. You know, you used to be able to find somebody who you were working with, trying to mentor at their job, and a lot of places shut down or people were working from home. It was unsafe. And finally, one of the things that has actually been a point of contention in 2021, the former chief of police, Lauren Armstrong, started a new unit that was aimed at boosting the city’s clearance rate. Right. So solving more homicides, which is an important part of the job.
Abené Clayton: However, the audit shows that the creation of that office pulled patrol units from those cease fire hotspots and diluted the presence of officers who knew the kind of cease fire ethos. There’s a certain level of BI in that those officers had and community insight that was taken from those areas. So those 3 or 4 things combined, as we’ve read in the audit and in some of the great coverage that’s come out of the audit, it rendered ceasefire pretty much a shell of its original self.
Ericka Cruz Guevarra: Coming up, why we’re talking about Operation Ceasefire now, and whether bringing it back can help make the city safer. Stay with us.
Ericka Cruz Guevarra: I know we’ve been talking about the the audit and of course, it is sort of the reason why we’re even talking about Operation Ceasefire, but also gun violence, as you’ve just been talking about, has gotten worse in Oakland over the years. Can you, I guess, just explain why there has been renewed attention to Operation Cease Fire in Oakland?
Abené Clayton: The mayor saw the level of gun violence that was happening and saw that it was continuing on, abated. And the statement that she put out just before the city council meeting where the audit was presented, she emphasized that like this did not happen overnight in public safety, the politics of crime are just something else in Oakland at the moment. And I you know, I can’t read her mind, but to think that it wouldn’t be politically advantageous to revive this. Marcie. Well known, nationally recognized gun violence prevention program. It kind of only makes sense to do that, especially if people are looking at you and laying all types of of crime, property, crime, violent crime directly at your feet.
Ericka Cruz Guevarra: What were the key takeaways from the audit? Like, what do they suggest the city do?
Abené Clayton: Sounds like the staffing levels need to rise once again. Coordination with the Office of Violence Prevention. That has seen its own changes. Just a greater level of coordination. The strategies are being discussed. How they’re going to approach people is being discussed. Beefing up life coaching and services and supports, which goes back to coordinating with the Office of Violence Prevention and so many of the groups that are in the city that provide these things but may operate in silos.
Ersie Joyner But what our audit says is that given the facts, what the city was doing, what took place, where we are now, we made a mistake.
Abené Clayton: RErsie Joyner was a longtime Oakland Police Department veteran. He had been with the department since the 90s, kind of seen all of the changes the city went through, and eventually became the head of Operation Cease Fire in the city.
Ersie Joyner: It was a strategy that not only was being successful in law enforcement, but more importantly, it was accepted by the community.
Abené Clayton: He spoke at the Oakland City Council meeting in mid-January. He said pretty plainly and learned that the city made a mistake. You know, it kind of allowed the operation cease fire to disintegrate for lack of a better term.
Ersie Joyner: And there’s nothing wrong with Eddie that we made a mistake in doing a course correction. But let’s go back to actually be a strategic, mindful and preventative and not just arresting people, but preventing people from being hurt.
Ericka Cruz Guevarra: How has Mayor Shengtao responded to the results of the audit?
Abené Clayton: Albany just three days after the City Council meeting where the audit was presented, she said that Operation Cease Fire would be fully staffed by that Saturday and that Saturday was the 20th. I mean, and it is important to mention that Shengtao was not the mayor when Oakland cease fire began. She was not even the mayor when this uptick in homicides started. She was quoted as saying that she’s taking responsibility for ensuring that staffing goes up, that there are checks on this group and that everything is running smooth.
Abené Clayton: It sounds like she wants to actively make sure that Operation Cease Fire gets fully back up and running as soon as possible, because the issue isn’t going anywhere. I do not know if that has happened because her communications people have yet to respond to my inquiry asking if the staffing levels reform. It’s not something I could find online. So it’s unclear at this present moment if we’re taking Mayor Tao out her word, it’s fully staffed and on its way to being operational. I wish I could confirm that, but, maybe they’ll hear this and call me back.
Ericka Cruz Guevarra: Assuming that maybe it is. I don’t imagine we’ll see results overnight. Overnight? How will we know? I guess, if it’s working again.
Abené Clayton: Yeah. I mean, I think there are a few markers we should keep our eye out for. What everybody wants to see is kind of a immediate drop in shootings, right? Of course. That is the ultimate goal is to stop bloodshed. That is one difficult two to measure and attribute to any one group. But with something like Operation Ceasefire, outside of what the police do to gather intelligence, to reach people, to have these, you know, ceasefire officers who are familiar with the goal and the ethos of the organization.
Abené Clayton: A big part of it is the relationships that are forged between those high risk people and violence intervention workers, between faith leaders. Right. And those relationships can lead to people putting the guns down. But it takes a while. Something I hear often is like, we are asking people to put their guns down, but what are we putting in their hands in return? It is complicated to try to figure out like, well, when are we going to see changes? It could take a generation, you know what I’m saying? And one thing that statistics can never capture is the 16 year old, who may have been ready to shoot somebody and never did.
Abené Clayton: I do hope to see more sort of like yearly and kind of regular reports about how many people are being reached, how many contacts were made, how many people were, you know, funneled into services, being able to keep track of those things over several years. Well, help us understand the violent crime trends that we that we may see, especially when it comes to homicides.
Ericka Cruz Guevarra: Abené, thank you so much as always.
Abené Clayton: Thank you for having me. It was a great time.
Ericka Cruz Guevarra: That was Abené Clayton, a reporter with the Guardian’s Guns and Lives in America project. This 40 minute conversation with Abené was cut down and edited by senior editor Alan Monteceillo. Maria Esquinca is our producer. She scored this episode and added the tape with extra production support from me. Music courtesy of Audio Network.
