OAKLAND — It might be hard to remember that gun violence in Oakland reached a historic low in 2019, given the devastating spike in shootings that has followed.
But a new audit suggests the city was already abandoning the core strategies of its once-lauded Ceasefire program, which seeks to negotiate de-escalations between warring residents or gangs, during those more peaceful years before the pandemic.
The report makes an urgent call for the city to get the intervention program back on track, and marks a fresh effort to understand how the effort to stop the cycles of violence could be turned in Oakland’s current crime wave.
It’s a pressing political issue for Mayor Sheng Thao, who has seen crime dominate headlines about Oakland during her tenure. Most recently, after an Oakland police officer was fatally shot this month during a cannabis burglary, the mayor’s critics launched a recall campaign that blames her for both the officer’s death and a perceived lack of initiative to curb gun violence in the city.
The audit, prepared by the California Partnership for Safe Communities at the mayor’s request, determined that the Ceasefire program, which was launched in 2013, began declining in 2016 and became especially diminished in 2019 and 2020 — during the administration of Thao’s predecessor, Mayor Libby Schaaf.
During those years, the report found, “each essential element of the strategy was significantly watered down, resources stripped away, or refocused.”
“As a result, the Ceasefire strategy no longer impacted citywide levels of violence in Oakland,” states the audit, which points the finger at the city’s shift away from dealing directly with individuals at risk of committing crime.
Most critically, according to the findings, the city needs to revive its weekly “shooting reviews,” in which law enforcement officials would discuss local shootings that were likely to result in retaliation, and how the sides could be talked into laying down their arms.
“To make the Shooting Review functional, the (Oakland Police Department’s) executive team should make this meeting and this strategy a priority for the Department again,” the report states. “Specifically, the executive team of the OPD needs to attend and participate in every meeting.”
A central feature of the Ceasefire is call-ins, or larger group meetings between people at high risk of participating in gun violence. The audit states that the messaging in these meetings remains effective, but cites a lack of strong tracking data to provide further context.
It also does not address how the pandemic’s strain on large gatherings or public access to hospitals — where Ceasefire officials would commonly approach gun-violence victims and their families about plans for retaliation — might have affected the project’s ability to reach people.
The audit also identified organizational challenges in the Department of Violence Prevention that have stymied efforts to track down individuals at risk of perpetrating gun violence, or gather useful data about who those people are.
It points out that while the operation is partly intended to curb incarceration rates, “holding violent perpetrators accountable is necessary both to provide justice to victims and families, but also to be able to stem ongoing cycles of retaliation.”
The team behind the audit is no stranger to the Ceasefire operation. Reygan Cunningham, co-director of California Partnership for Safe Communities, actually managed the Ceasefire project in Oakland while serving as a public safety official under Mayor Jean Quan’s administration.
Former Oakland police captain Ersie Joyner III, another team member, managed the Ceasefire strategy on behalf of OPD before retiring in 2019. Joyner was wounded in a 2022 shooting at a West Oakland gas station after three men attempted to rob him.
The audit urged OPD to disband the Violent Crime Operations Center, which was founded by ex-Chief LeRonne Armstrong, saying it “disrupted proactive policing, hindering crime prevention under the Ceasefire strategy.”
Schaaf had championed Ceasefire during her tenure as mayor, widely publicizing a five-year period ending in 2019 when she said crimes investigated as murders in Oakland had reached their lowest point in the city’s history.
That preceded a nationwide rise in gun violence during the pandemic, with gun homicides spiking 45% in 2020 and 2021 across the country, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Oakland was among the cities swept up in the sudden crime wave, going from 78 deaths investigated as homicides in 2019 to 134 in 2021, a 15-year high.
But unlike other large California cities — such as Los Angeles, San Diego, Sacramento and Fresno — that saw sky-high homicide rates drop as the pandemic waned, Oakland’s murder problem remains. There were 126 deaths investigated as homicides in 2023 in Oakland.
A spokesperson for the Oakland Police Department said questions about how police involvement in the Ceasefire strategy might have changed over the years should be directed to City Hall. Thao’s representatives could not be reached for comment.
The audit’s findings, meanwhile, are expected to be discussed by the City Council at its meeting on Tuesday.