Oakland’s Ceasefire program was once an effective strategy for reducing gun violence in the city. However, a recent audit shows that the program has been significantly diminished in recent years, leading to a spike in gun violence.
The Ceasefire program operates on the concept that a small number of people drive most of the gun violence in US cities. It says this violence is not random—rather, it is often retaliatory, or based on long standing tensions between gangs or other groups. It instructs cities to invest in resources—like job training, counseling, and social services—for these individuals, which may help them to step away from the violence. Ceasefire couples this strategy with special teams of law enforcement who are trained to investigate gun crimes.
For years, this strategy seemed to work in Oakland. According to a 2019 study, Oakland shootings fell from 557 in 2012 to 284 in 2019. But they have spiked in recent years. In 2021, there were more homicides in Oakland than there were in the previous 15 years.
The new audit was called for by Oakland Mayor Sheng Thao, who says her administration plans to “resurrect” the program. It was conducted by California Partnership for Safe Communities, the organization that helped Oakland launch Ceasefire back in 2013, and co-managed the program until 2020.
It found that Oakland began to gut the program in 2016, under then-Mayor Libby Schaaf. The city continued to strip resources from Ceasefire in 2019 and 2020, or focused them on other programs. The audit concludes that by 2020, Ceasefire was no longer reducing gun violence in Oakland, as the pandemic further diminished the effectiveness of the program.
In particular, the audit highlights the creation of Oakland’s Department of Violence Prevention in 2021 as a significant factor contributing to the decline of Ceasefire. It criticizes the new department for focusing resources on solving crimes, instead of preventing them.
The audit was presented to the Oakland City Council on Tuesday afternoon.
