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Oakland Ceasefire

Oakland Ceasefire is an evidence-based approach to reducing community violence. Driven by a community-police partnership that includes clergy, street outreach, service providers, and law enforcement, the program uses data to understand who is at the highest risk of shooting or being killed. Oakland Ceasefire has been instrumental in a local shift towards community policing and violence reduction strategies — built on a collaborative impact model — that have yielded incredible successes in Oakland, cutting both homicides and nonfatal shootings in half since 2012.

Typically, data and analysis show that those most at risk of gun violence are members of gangs and street groups who have already had extensive involvement in the criminal justice system and represent a small fraction of a city’s overall population — typically less than 1%. In other words, the most dangerous violence is concentrated among a very small number of residents.

Oakland Ceasefire’s strategy relies on direct communication and calls from the community, local law enforcement, faith leaders, and others to stop the violence. The strategy is enhanced through tightly coordinated, disciplined, community-level efforts that rely on street outreach and other forms of community leadership. Trusted members of the community, such as clergy, will often employ night walks to promote the program, build a culture of peace and healing, and reduce violence and killings without sending more people to prison. Additionally, Oakland Ceasefire’s model relies on intensive services and support provided by faith-based organizations and coordinated by Oakland Unite. This includes paid job training, substance abuse counseling, educational and legal support, in addition to crisis response to shootings and violence, among other services.

The Hellman Collaborative Change Initiative grant will help Oakland Ceasefire continue to scale its important, life-changing work across Oakland and expand it around the globe. With police brutality and systemic racism at the forefront of the national conversation, their work to build bridges between law enforcement and communities could not come at a more important time.

“This work isn’t magic, it’s just the hard work of finding common ground between groups of people who have very little overlap in their frames of reference. It’s consistently finding methods for both parties to be humanized in practical, consistent ways.” Rev. Ben McBride, Co-Director of PICO California


The Collaboration

  • Office of Mayor Libby Schaaf
  • California Partnership for Safe Communities
  • Oakland Unite
  • Oakland Police Department
  • Oakland District Attorney’s Office
  • US Attorney’s Office
  • Alameda County Probation
  • California Department of Rehabilitation and Correction
  • US Marshall’s Service
  • The Secret Service
  • California Highway Patrol
  • Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI)
  • Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA)
  • Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF)

The Problem

  • Gun violence in Oakland is a persistent problem that is often traced back to a small group of people engaged in violent homicides and retaliatory shootings
  • Years of more “traditional” policing tactics and aggressive arrest quotas did not prove significantly effective in stopping the violence and murder in Oakland, which once ranked among the nation’s most dangerous cities, averaging over 100 murders a year from 1968 to 2018
  • Gun violence and illegal gun possession is a major factor in criminal recidivism and high incarceration rates
read about their work in this mother jones article, "whose streets?"

For more information, contact:
Rev. Ben McBride
Co-Director, PICO California
(916) 813-9447 | ben@picocalifornia.org
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  • Home
    • Grantmaking >
      • For Grantseekers
    • Letter from the Board
    • Our Founders
    • Our Grantees
  • Collaborative Change Initiative
    • About the Initiative
    • Announcing 2022 Awardees
    • LAUNCH and GROWTH Grants
    • Community Panel
    • Capacity Building
    • Awardees >
      • 2022 Awardees >
        • Oakland Postsecondary Education & Workforce Collaborative
        • The Pop-Up Village
        • Ready, Resilient, & Rising! (R3)
      • 2019 Awardees >
        • Alameda Families United CARE
        • Expecting Justice
        • Oakland Ceasefire
      • 2017 Awardees >
        • End Hep C SF
        • Food as Medicine Collaborative
        • Recipe4Health, a project of ALL IN – Alameda County
        • San Francisco Educator Pathway Coalition
      • 2015 Awardees >
        • African American Postsecondary Pathway
        • Home Stretch
        • Little 5 / Big 5
        • Oakland Starting Smart and Strong Initiative
      • 2014 Awardees >
        • CavityFree SF
        • EatSF
    • FAQ
  • Hardly Strictly Bluegrass
  • Hellman Fellows
  • Contact Us