City officials meet weekly to review recent shootings and identify the participants. The city’s Department of Violence Prevention finds and talks to those people, one-on-one or in a group session at the church, and offers a host of services, including a life coach.<\/p>\n
There is no single reason why a city’s homicide rate falls, but officials say the Oakland Ceasefire-Lifeline program has been key, making a difference one person at a time.<\/p>\n
Oakland records lowest homicide rate since the ’60s<\/p>\n
Homicides rates have plummeted in major cities across the U.S. in recent years but the shift in Oakland has been particularly dramatic.<\/p>\n
Homicide rates have not been this low in the city of roughly 400,000 people since 1967, when the Black Panthers were a powerful force and hippies overran nearby San Francisco for the Summer of Love.<\/p>\n
For nearly 25 years, Oakland ranked among the nation’s most dangerous cities. City police recorded annual homicide rates ranging from 16.2 up to 36.4 deaths per 100,000 people, while the U.S. rate hovered around five per 100,000.<\/p>\n
Oakland adopted the lifeline program, which originated in Boston, after gun violence in 2011 took the lives of three children ages 1, 3 and 5 in separate incidents. The city recorded a 43% reduction in homicides from 2012 to 2017.<\/p>\n
Officials subsequently watered the program down until it was essentially dismantled during the pandemic, according to an audit in 2023.<\/p>\n
It wasn’t until city officials implemented changes recommended in the audit that the number of homicides declined, from 118 in 2023 to 78 in 2024.<\/p>\n
Last year, Oakland hit a record low of 57 homicides.<\/p>\n
Meeting people whose lives were changed by violence<\/p>\n
Police are not involved except to provide the names of people expected to retaliate for a shooting that wounded or killed a friend or relative, or to be a victim of retaliation.<\/p>\n
“People may underestimate how little the clients believe in themselves, and how little they value their own lives,” said Holly Joshi, chief of the violence prevention department.<\/p>\n
Once selected, the men meet or learn of people whose lives have been forever changed by gang violence, such as parents who have lost a child, or someone left paralyzed able to communicate only by clicking their tongue.<\/p>\n
Last year, Bernard, a 27-year-old former gang member, was among 200 people matched with a life coach. He was contacted as he was leaving prison after serving six years for attempted robbery. Today, he has a full-time job, an apartment and a new outlook.<\/p>\n
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