{"id":124920,"date":"2026-01-08T08:23:31","date_gmt":"2026-01-08T08:23:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/124920\/"},"modified":"2026-01-08T08:23:31","modified_gmt":"2026-01-08T08:23:31","slug":"oakland-leaders-cite-double-digit-decrease-in-crime-admit-work-needed-on-gun-violence","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/124920\/","title":{"rendered":"Oakland leaders cite double-digit decrease in crime, admit work needed on gun violence"},"content":{"rendered":"

Oakland Mayor Barbara Lee touted the city\u2019s double-digit, year-over-year drop in crime Wednesday while acknowledging that gun violence continues to traumatize many communities.<\/p>\n

Citing the Oakland Police Department\u2019s end-of-year crime report, Lee said lawbreaking was down by 24% across the board in 2025, while the city\u2019s 67 killings represent a 22% drop in homicides compared to the previous year.<\/p>\n

\"\"Oakland Mayor Barbara Lee touts the city\u2019s double-digit reduction in crime rates for 2025, but said gun violence remains a challenge. \u201cAnd yes, of course, I would like to eliminate it, like all of you,\u201d she said. (Kiley Russell\/Bay City News)<\/p>\n

\u201cEven with the historic progress, gun violence remains a challenge and we\u2019re continuing our work with all of our partners to address it and to reduce it,\u201d Lee said during a news conference at City Hall. \u201cAnd yes, of course, I would like to eliminate it, like all of you.\u201d<\/p>\n

Lee, Interim Police Chief James Beere and Holly Joshi, who heads Oakland\u2019s Department of Violence Prevention, said the statistics reflect the city\u2019s ongoing commitment to work across departments and in cooperation with faith-based groups and community organizations on policing strategies and curbing violence of all kinds, particularly gun violence.<\/p>\n

Joshi said Oakland began to see real progress when it reestablished its commitment to the city\u2019s Ceasefire program in 2023.<\/p>\n

The Ceasefire program is a data-driven effort to root out the causes of violence one person at a time.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe experts in the field estimate that in Oakland at any given time there\u2019s between 240 and 350 people that are most at risk of being involved in gun violence,\u201d Joshi said. \u201cSo the strategy is specifically meant to identify and then intervene in the lives of those specific people.\u201d<\/p>\n

OPD committed to curbing crime<\/p>\n

Beere said his department is fully on board with the program and other non-traditional efforts to curb crime.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re not trying to arrest our way out of this problem,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Still, the department responded to 203,000 calls for service in 2025, took 1,200 guns off the streets and had a 95% clearance rate for homicides, according to Beere.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf you engage in violent crime, we will catch you and we will bring you to justice and you will be charged,\u201d Beere said.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf you engage in violent crime, we will catch you and we will bring you to justice and you will be charged.\u201d<\/p>\n

Paul Beere, interim chief of police<\/p>\n

He also praised the department\u2019s use of technology, like the city\u2019s automated gunfire detection system, license plate readers and drones, as well as reorganization efforts that emphasize the patrol division and improving response times, including by hiring more 911 dispatchers.<\/p>\n

In addition, Oakland Fire Chief Damon Covington said the MACRO program<\/a>, which his department runs, has responded to 10,000 non-violent, non-emergency calls in the past three years and is designed to intervene in situations that don\u2019t necessarily require a sworn police officer\u2019s assistance.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe program connects residents to care while allowing police to focus on violent crime and fire crews to respond to emergencies that require emergency medical support,\u201d Covington said.<\/p>\n

\"\"Pastor Mike Wallace of the Mt. Zion Missionary Baptist Church leads a prayer at the podium with Oakland\u2019s mayor and City Council members prior to a news conference on Wednesday, Jan. 7, 2026, at City Hall to discuss the city\u2019s double-digit reduction in crime rates across the board for 2025. (Kiley Russell\/Bay City News)<\/p>\n

In addition to the drop in homicides in 2025, the city saw a 43% drop in robberies, a 49% drop in carjackings, a 39% drop in auto thefts and a 47% drop in commercial burglaries.<\/p>\n

Lee and others acknowledged that the statistics themselves won\u2019t necessarily make Oaklanders feel safe, especially if they or someone they know have been crime victims.<\/p>\n

A matter of perspective<\/p>\n

Lisa Hill, a California State University, East Bay professor of criminal justice, agrees and said it\u2019s important for city leaders to address both crime and people\u2019s perceptions of their own safety.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think that it sounds like they have addressed what the research has consistently reported, and that is using an evidence-based approach to law enforcement, specifically targeting high-crime, high-victim areas and actually working with the community,\u201d Hill said.<\/p>\n

She cautioned, however, that for people living in high-crime areas or who have been victimized, the numbers might seem like smoke-and-mirrors.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf I were living there and I was hearing these numbers, that could have an opposing effect for me because I might be, \u2018Wait a minute, I just got robbed last week and my cousin was just robbed and my neighbor down the street was murdered,\u2019 and so that could feel as though certain communities are being left behind in these numbers,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Oakland Mayor Barbara Lee touted the city\u2019s double-digit, year-over-year drop in crime Wednesday while acknowledging that gun violence…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":124921,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[7,65035,65036,723,23048,93,4306,5364,33884,58255,4309,143,145,144,407,4310,1492],"class_list":["post-124920","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-oakland","tag-california","tag-ceasefire-program","tag-chief-damon-covington","tag-crime","tag-crime-victims","tag-featured","tag-featured-news","tag-gun-violence","tag-james-beere","tag-macro","tag-mayor-barbara-lee","tag-oakland","tag-oakland-headlines","tag-oakland-news","tag-oakland-police-department","tag-opd","tag-public-safety"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/124920","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=124920"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/124920\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/124921"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=124920"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=124920"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=124920"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}