Gun violence has sharply declined in California's Bay Area. What happened? | US news | ... - 0 views
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Cities that once ranked among the nation’s deadliest, such as Oakland and Richmond, have seen enormous decreases over the past decade. These are not single-year drops in killings, but declines sustained over multiple years
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California has the strongest gun laws in the country, and it’s enacted more than 30 new gun control laws since 2009 alone
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Gun homicide rates for all races have fallen, but the drop was largest for black Bay Area residents: a 40% decrease.
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As officials in cities such as Oakland have touted the progress in gun violence numbers, they have repeatedly faced the same question: is the drop in gun violence just a result of gentrification?
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An academic study of gun violence in Oakland neighborhoods found that the city’s focused deterrence strategy, known as “Ceasefire”, significantly reduced shootings, even when accounting for the level of gentrification in different areas.
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the fact that big drops in gun violence are coming at the same time as intense gentrification and displacement has raised troubling questions for some local activists about who will get to benefit from living in a safer Oakland – and whose interests the decreases in shootings may ultimately serve.
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As we make the city safer, are we opening up the floodgates more for gentrification? That’s what it feels like,” Clarke said. “Are we cleaning up the city for other people to move in?”
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The Bay Area’s drop in gun violence does not reflect a drop in overall “crime”. The rate of property crimes such as theft and burglary have decreased only 16% across the region as gun violence has fallen by nearly a third. San Francisco has seen its property crime rate increase even as the number of people killed in gun homicides has dropped.
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Criminal justice reforms have reduced the number of residents spending their lives behind bars. Since 2006, California’s state prison population has fallen by 25
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There’s early evidence that local violence prevention strategies – including a refocused, more community-driven “Ceasefire” policing strategy, and intensive support programs that do not involve law enforcement at all – were a “key change” contributing to these huge decreases.
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At the same time, Thomas said: “few of the laws enacted in the last 10 years would have been expected to entirely explain the significant reductions in the Bay Area.”
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Nor have policies to shield undocumented immigrants led to violence, as Donald Trump and some of his Republican allies often warn. San Francisco saw a 49% drop in its gun homicide rate as it held to its pro-immigrant law enforcement policies
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At the heart of the different strategies Bay Area cities are using are the same basic elements: data, dollars, and community leadership, including leadership from formerly incarcerated residents.
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“The common context among each of these cities – Richmond, Oakland, and San Francisco – is that they have adopted community-driven, non-law enforcement approaches, and they’ve been robustly funded,
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Longtime community outreach workers and violence interrupters, many of whom are formerly incarcerated, are crucial to making these public health strategies effective, experts across the region said
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Finally, better analysis of who’s behind the violence has helped law enforcement, social services and community groups intervene more effectively. In Oakland, for example, a 2017 study of every homicide that occurred over 18 months showed that only 0.16% of Oakland’s population, about 700 high-risk men, were responsible for the majority of the homicides
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“Gun violence is pretty much a form of disease. Once it starts affecting one person, it starts spreading,” said the former fellow, who asked that his name not be published
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The fellowship helped him develop and realize a new vision for his life. He ended up graduating from the historically black college he had visited on one of the trips--a place, he said, where “I didn’t have to watch over my shoulder.” “To have somebody who believes in you, and knows you’ve got the potential to go for it, stuff like that makes you want to keep going right,” he said