Abéné Clayton in Oakland:

As cities across the United States see a significant increase in homicides this year, police departments and some politicians have pointed to criminal justice reforms, low morale in police departments and officer resignations as the reasons for this. increase. Efforts to fund police services coupled with increased gun sales have led to lawlessness, they argue, and cities should bolster police budgets and hire more officers to fight the law. violence.

This analysis does not fully explain the current dynamics of the rise in violence. It does not take into account the impact of the pandemic on vulnerable communities and the disruption caused by blockages in violence prevention strategies. Furthermore, research showed that cities that increased police budgets were just as likely to see an increase in killings as cities that reduced them.

While Democrats and Republicans use murder of blacks and browns to make political arguments, organizers in hardest-hit communities say their own voices and solutions are not being heard. Relying on arrests and prosecutions to reduce violent crime has helped fuel mass incarceration and led to the overrepresentation of blacks and Latinxes in prisons and prisons nationwide, organizers say, destabilizing many. families already underserved and contributing to the cycle of gun violence in these countries. communities. And the focus on arrests ignores the progress made by local violence prevention and victim advocacy groups in recent years, efforts that have proven to save lives.

“It’s frustrating that this conversation is being harnessed and exploited to become a political conversation rather than a conversation about the disparities that are now worse off,” Hollins said. “It is also a big slap in the face to the organization that has been made around the violence.”

Recent conversations about crime and violence come at a time when non-police responses to gun violence are increasingly being recognized by officials at all levels. Joe biden has allocated $ 5 billion in its infrastructure plan for community response programs that target a city’s small population of residents who are involved in the majority of violent incidents.

On June 23, Biden also put in place a plan to tackle the increase in gun crime and other public safety concerns that would “crack down on gun traffickers” and provide additional funds to cities to hire more officers and pay for their overtime. The plan also stresses the need for sustained support for holistic violence prevention programs.

“They step in before it’s too late, these switches,” Biden said. “They turn the temperature down, stop the cycle of retaliation and connect people to services. And it works. States should invest US bailout funds in these kinds of violent crime programs. “

The services and programs that have been shown to be effective in reducing shootings in recent years are diverse and affect people at different points in the cycle of gun violence. Some work with the police and some don’t. Some try to intervene before the shootings occur. Others send people in to help victims and prevent retaliation. Some programs offer financial assistance for funerals and counseling links.

Research suggests that many of these programs in California have been very successful in saving lives and public funds. In 2012, the Department of Justice recommended that hospital violence intervention programs like Youth Alive! Oakland and the Wraparound project in San Francisco are expected to be developed across the United States. Homicides in Oakland have fallen by nearly half in the six years since the launch of an innovative police-community partnership called Operation Ceasefire in 2012. And in Stockton, Calif., A Recent evaluation of Advance Peace, a violence interruption program, found it was contributing to a 20% drop in homicides and gun assaults and saved the city between $ 42, 3 and 110 million dollars in its first two years of existence, while operating on less than 900,000 dollars during the same period.

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