Community programs, policing cut homicides
Rates drop in many of Bay Area’s largest cities last year
The gunmen walked into the Richmond church wearing masks.
Deandre, sitting in a pew along with his mother and brother, had nowhere to go. The congregation took cover, and the gang of three opened fire. Two bullets pierced Deandre’s back. From there, life’s downward spiral began.
In the span of five years Deandre, now 22, was kicked out of high school, lost his father, and saw his friends bounce in and out of jail. He probably would have done the same, if not for the intervention of a Richmond counselor who enrolled him in a jobtraining fellowship — a type of program that law enforcement is crediting with helping to cut homicide rates in several East
Bay cities.
“When you get shot, you get upset,” said Deandre, who asked that his last name be withheld for safety reasons. “I used to not care about stuff. I didn’t take a lot of stuff seriously.”
Since joining the program, he has been able to find seasonal work and is close to completing his general equivalency diploma. His third daughter was born this month, and he has no intention of wasting the second chance the fellowship afforded him.
“It taught me how to be a man,” Deandre said. “It taught me how to value life. It taught me to get back in school and achieve my goals. And now I got more to live for.”
Richmond had a landmark year in 2017, with one of the larger homicide drops in the East Bay. The number of killings dropped by 37 percent, from 24 in 2016 to 15 last year.
But it wasn’t alone in seeing a noticeable decline in violent deaths.
Oakland had a 15 percent drop to 72 killings last year, and in Hayward, the number of homicides went down 61 percent, to just five in 2017. Overall, the Bay Area’s 15 largest cities saw a 15 percent decrease in homicides, from 277 in 2016 to 235 last year.
Police departments across the region attribute the drop to a variety of factors, including better data for policing decisions and increased gang enforcement. But according to law enforcement and community advocates in the East Bay, outreach programs like the one that helped Deandre can affect the murder rate beyond a single year.
“Nothing stops a bullet like a job,” said DeVone Boggan, director of Richmond’s Office of Neighborhood Safety.
Richmond’s falling homicide rate has coincided with police efforts to engage and establish trust with residents, said Police Chief Allwyn Brown. As a result, he said, the community has played an active role in tracking suspects and intervening before conflicts turn deadly.
“History has taught us that the active life cycle of a serial shooter who’s pulling triggers is a year or less,” Brown said. “So unless we are up on intelligence and knowing who’s beefing right now — and intervene before bullets start flying and people start dying — then we are going to miss it.”
In Oakland, police have identified up to 11 groups of people who are frequently suspected of gun violence throughout the city, said Capt. Roland Holmgren of the police criminal investigation division.
Developing relationships with residents in certain neighborhoods, in addition to using surveillance technology such as the ShotSpotter activation device, has been central to police efforts, he said.
“We are being relentless about going back to the persons responsible, working with the district attorney’s office and with communities to get information,” Holmgren said. “It’s all of these things that come together that we’ve seen some pretty significant successes.”
He added, “We still have work to do.”
One program that has proved effective in assisting law enforcement is Oakland Unite, which identifies people affected by gun violence and provides them with services such as career training, educational support and transitional employment. Participants meet with a life coach who helps them navigate through the court system, probation and finding housing.
Peter Kim, the manager of Oakland Unite in the city’s Human Services Department, said the positive results have been evident.
“Participants who receive services have fewer arrests in the six months after participation when compared to a group of similar individuals who did not receive services,” he said.
In 2016, the organization served more than 5,000 people affected by gun violence, a majority of whom had prior arrests in Oakland. It collaborates with the Alameda County Probation Department, Highland Hospital, the school district and community organizations.
In Hayward, anti-gang operations in 2016 led to the complete elimination of gangrelated homicides last year, said John Racette, a sergeant in the city’s Police Department.
“We had certain gangs that were feuding, and so we did targeted activities regarding those gangs to eliminate the violence that was going back and forth between them,” Racette said. “Once you make those important arrests on both sides of the gangs, oftentimes you do see lower violence and lower crimes.”
The department also conducted outreach to young schoolchildren through its Gang Resistance Education and Training program.
“Gun violence can be cyclical from the very beginning,” Racette said. “Their kids or grandkids become new members of a gang, and then they come back.”
On a recent day, Hayward police Officer Julian Cosgriff clutched a box of workbooks as he walked into a sixthgrade class at Bowman Elementary School. The class of nearly 25 students shuffled to their seats after recess, and Cosgriff prepared several roleplaying exercises and quizzes.
In total, eight student resource officers from Hayward’s Police Department teach at a dozen sixth-grade classes across the city, focusing on neighborhoods identified as the most affected by gangs. Sixth grade is considered a pivotal time to try to dissuade these young people from joining gangs, Racette said, and the early returns are paying off.
“Sometimes it takes just one person to change the course of history,” Cosgriff told the students.