Community Violence Intervention IS the Police Defunding Movement
Call to Action: Funding programs that undermine our safety and institutions must be stopped.
Let me begin by saying that I will be honored to testify to Congress regarding H.R. 5003 regarding the ineffectiveness of community violence intervention strategies and their Marxist priorities. This legislation is detrimental to public safety and will undermine law enforcement nationwide.
Community Violence Intervention’s Success Story: Oakland, CA
Oakland, California has been the focal point of the modern Operation Ceasefire movement, from its adaptation from the Boston Miracle model to a program by the PICO National Network. PICO was originally founded in 1972 as the Pacific Institute for Community Organization by Father John Baumann, a Jesuit priest who had learned community organizing in Chicago from Saul Alinsky trained organizers. It began as a regional training institute to help support neighborhood organizations in California.
Oakland has been highlighted as a success story by CVI promoters who are invited to town by citizens seeking solutions to localized gun violence. The DOJ website rates Operation Ceasefire highly with nearly a perfect five-star evaluation. You will hear from them that effects from the program in Oakland cut shootings in half. In the Austin neighborhood of Chicago, they claim 473 fewer people shot and 83 fewer people killed and receiving $11 million of city money to replicate this across Chicago. Not even considering that there is another similar program in Chicago, the rush to grab trophies is real and neither city’s reputation for safety has improved.
In 2017 and 2018 I was assigned to help the community violence intervention strategy brokers from Oakland who, ultimately, were seeking a $750,000 per year, three-year commitment to administer the program in our area. During this time, PICO rebranded as Faith in Action.
They failed to disclose that they were going to receive matching money from a west coast foundation and that they had received over a million dollars from Google.org, the philanthropic arm of Alphabet to get us on board.
Last year, they received a commitment of $1.5 million dollars per year from the city over a two-year period using America Rescue Plan funds. It was like Christmas when I read the open letter from the Oakland NAACP.
A ‘Heyday’ for Criminals
I viewed initial reports of the unsigned letter with an abundance of skepticism. However, the authors came forward and the news reports followed. WPDE reported: “An Oakland, California Black advocacy group has called for residents of its city to abandon the Defund the Police movement after a recent rise in violent crime. Penning a letter to city leaders last week, the Oakland branch of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) said the movement to defund police has led to a “heyday” for criminals.”
Fox 2 KTVU also reported: "Criminal investigations of serious crimes and our Ceasefire program to prevent violence – those are high priorities, and we should not cut staffing in those two areas," he (Councilmember Dan Kalb) said. The NAACP and Bishop Jackson call for more police officers being hired, quality education and mentorship for Oakland’s youth, and reinvestment in blue collar jobs.”
The story began to reach a national audience: ‘Adams warned that everyone in Oakland is in danger: “You can’t go to the grocery stores, you can’t put groceries in your car. You can’t do anything. We have to say something.” The letter is asking leaders to acknowledge and declare a public safety emergency; seek assistance from California, Alameda County and state law enforcement; and provide job training and mentorship so the youth will have alternatives to crime. The call to end Oakland’s public safety crisis is going out to all elected and appointed public officials responsible for public safety. Adams says no one is being singled out.’
The Blatant Goals of the Organizations
While there are many names including Cure Violence, Live Free USA, Advance Peace and Faith in Action, and in spite of them existing under the obligations of the IRS non-profit 501 (C) (3) guidelines, all of them state polarizing political positions and suggest actions well beyond social justice. Live Free USA has a pre-filled form with a letter, just click in on the advocate tab, stating the following:
As your constituent, I am writing to ask you to oppose President Biden's plan to hire 100,000 new police officers. This is a replication of one of the signature investments of the highly destructive 1994 Crime Bill which helped fuel the mass incarceration of Black and Brown communities for decades.
So please, as you return to session, reject any increases in police funding that do not require reform in practices and accountability. Please continue to support legislation focused on proven ways to dramatically reduce violence in our country, not increasing the number of anti-reform police officers.
As was the case in 1994, no significant steps have been taken to ensure that 100,000 new police will be accountable for their treatment of Black and Brown communities. No federal police reform bills have been passed and no restrictions have been proposed that would tie funding to locally-based reforms. Police misconduct and abuses similar to George Floyd and Breonna Taylor continue in 2022 with no accountability!
Don’t worry about who your congressional representatives are – we will take it from there and get your petition in their hands. Live Free USA also offers a selection of merchandise where you can purchase a t-shirt for $24.99 bearing the graphic of eight black power fists and your choice of message: Live Free from Incarceration, Live Free from Death Penalty, Live Free from Injustice, and Live Free from Racism or bear the message that you are a Certified Peacemaker.
The stated goals on all the websites, and all the linked websites, declare their mission to ‘dismantle all systems of injustice.’ Their focused topics, clearly stated include ending mass incarceration, promoting police defunding, universal healthcare, ending mass criminalization and offering citizenship to all illegal aliens. There is an agenda to every story and predicably the police are in the way. Always, there is a description of reimagining justice and living in collectives with social services replacing the police.
Quoting Pastor Mike McBride from his video on the site: “Our tax dollars can be flowing into more police and more jails or more healing and more peacemaking. We can save lives without sending more of our loved ones to jail.” A rare and damning admission of black-on-black violence in our communities.
Resurrection of the Break the Cycle of Violence Act
On July 27, 2023, United States Congressman Steven Horsford (D-Nevada-4) introduced H.R. 5003 – ‘To authorize the Secretary of Health and Human Services to build safer, thriving communities, and save lives, by investing in effective community-based violence reduction initiatives, and for other purposes.’
Bottom line up front, according to press releases, this is substantially the same bill that was introduced as H.R. 4118 on June 24, 2021. This bill offers up to five billion dollars in grants, via the Secretary of Health and Human Services, for community violence initiatives. (There is another 1.5 billion dollars in occupational training.) What I have failed to mention so far is that the Break the Cycle of Violence Act passed the house in the 117th Congress.
Everyone you know in law enforcement and corrections needs to know what you know about this legislation and these programs. Please share courageously. Permitting this bill to survive the House is akin to arming your assailant.
As always, keep all our officers in your prayers!
References:
"Criminal investigations of serious crimes and our Ceasefire program to prevent violence – those are high priorities, and we should not cut staffing in those two areas," he (Councilmember Dan Kalb) said.
The NAACP and Bishop Jackson call for more police officers being hired, quality education and mentorship for Oakland’s youth, and reinvestment in blue collar jobs.
An Oakland, California Black advocacy group has called for residents of its city to abandon the Defund the Police movement after a recent rise in violent crime.
Penning a letter to city leaders last week, the Oakland branch of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) said the movement to defund police has led to a “heyday” for criminals.
https://www.newsnationnow.com/crime/naacp-oakland-crime-emergency/
Adams warned that everyone in Oakland is in danger: “You can’t go to the grocery stores, you can’t put groceries in your car. You can’t do anything. We have to say something.”
The letter is asking leaders to acknowledge and declare a public safety emergency; seek assistance from California, Alameda County and state law enforcement; and provide job training and mentorship so the youth will have alternatives to crime.
The call to end Oakland’s public safety crisis is going out to all elected and appointed public officials responsible for public safety. Adams says no one is being singled out.
https://www.nbcbayarea.com/news/local/east-bay/oakland-state-of-emergency-naacp/3283472/
In response to growing crime concerns in the city of Oakland, the NAACP and religious leaders are calling on the city to issue a state of emergency.
“We need to do something now to curtail, I think World War III happening in the city of Oakland,” said Bob Jackson, bishop at the Acts Full Gospel Church and part of the NAACP.
In a meeting Thursday night, Alameda County District Attorney Pamela Price addressed a tense crowd of concerned citizens including supporters.
“I think she stands for fairness and that’s what she supports,” said Shenandoah Williams.
And critics who accuse her reform policies of being too soft on crime.
"There is nothing compassionate or progressive about allowing criminal behavior to fester and rob Oakland residents of their basic rights to public safety. It is not racist or unkind to want to be safe from crime. No one should live in fear in our city."
The Oakland, California, chapter of the NAACP has had enough of the lawlessness produced by Democrats’ soft-on-crime policies and is demanding that the city declare a “state of emergency” due to a lack of safety.
In a blistering letter, the local branch of the NAACP, wrote, “Oakland residents are sick and tired of our intolerable public safety crisis that overwhelmingly impacts minority communities. Murders, shootings, violent armed robberies, home invasions, car break-ins, sideshows, and highway shootouts have become a pervasive fixture of life in Oakland.”
As of July 16, Oakland has seen a 15% rise in overall violent crime this year compared to 2022 — including a 49% increase in motor vehicle theft and a 22% increase in robberies.
https://picocalifornia.org/who-we-are/
https://livefreeusa.org
https://shop.livefreeusa.org
This was really good. We talked about this in my briefing this morning! Every situation I responded to as a supervisor today involving a non-white person, whether a reporting party, witness, victim, or suspect, I asked the same one question… Without laws and accountability to those laws, what do you think would happen to our society?
Didn’t really have a lot of anti-police sentiment after that. Keep up the truly excellent work based in real life experience driven by responsible interpretation of statistics.