Call-ins

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October 3, 2011 | 6:01 PM | By

Proposed Oakland gang injunctions may complicate anti-gang efforts

Daniel Ramirez

Oakland city leaders will have to make hard choices about their approach to conflicting anti-gang programs

According to city officials, Oakland faces a “staggering gang violence problem,” with an estimated 2,000 active gang members from 65 gangs operating throughout the city, some with ties to statewide prison gangs like Nuestra Familia.

To tackle this dilemma, Oakland sought assistance from the California Gang Reduction, Intervention and Prevention grant fund, which is run by the governor’s Office of Gang and Youth Violence Prevention. Created in 2007 by the state legislature, $27.6 million in Cal-GRIP funds had been awarded to 38 cities and 25 community-based organizations across the state as of November 2010.

Oakland was awarded a two-year Cal-GRIP grant in 2009 for a program tailored around the carrot and stick model of Operation Ceasefire, a nationwide violence prevention program pioneered in Boston and Chicago. The centerpiece of Operation Ceasefire is a program known as a “call-in”, which targets alleged gang members on probation or parole with a “scared straight” approach that both outlines the treatment they will receive from law enforcement if they continue to commit crimes while offering employment and education services to get them out of the street life. Continue reading →

FILED UNDER: Politics, Call-ins, Gang Injunctions, Oakland, Operation Ceasefire
August 29, 2011 | 5:22 PM | By

Oakland: anti-gang strategies appear at odds

Daniel Ramirez

Oakland city leaders will have to make hard choices about their approach to conflicting anti-gang programs

[N.B. This post has been updated to reflect the receipt of the final progress report by the California Emergency Management Administration on May 19, 2011, and that the state will begin a formal review of the O-GRIPP program.]

If Oakland is going to go forward with its gang injunction strategy, as Councilmembers Larry Reid and Ignacio De La Fuente would have it, city leaders will have to make hard decisions about how to keep that program from interfering with state-funded anti-gang programs that have already been hampered by the injunctions.

Last week, we reported on an Oakland city document detailing the conflicts between the state-funded “call-in” program, geared towards non-traditional gang prevention, and the city’s controversial gang injunction program. A final progress report accounting for $828,217 in matching state and city funds for the Oakland Gang Reduction, Intervention and Prevention Program (or O-GRIP) identifies the injunctions as one of the main challenges to the call-in effort. According to the report, overlap between the injunctions and the call-ins hurt the latter program’s credibility on the street and may have reduced participation in the call-ins.

The lack of coordination between the injunctions and call-ins was such that the state agency that funded the call-ins was never made aware of the conflict. According to Lori Newquist, the California Emergency Management Administration received a copy of the report on May 19th of this year.

Newquist said that Oakland’s Cal-GRIP grant, along with similar funds for eight other cities, was administered by Cal-EMA. A third party contractor, Stephen Wakeling of the Oakland-based Public Health Institute, was retained by Oakland through outside grant funding to troubleshoot the project as well as eight other California cities also implementing the call-in model. Neither Wakeling nor the city of Oakland had previously reported any problems regarding gang injunctions and call-ins to Cal-EMA. While Newquist did say the interaction of the gang injunctions and call-ins was something that was “between Oakland and their contractor,” she did confirm that Cal-EMA will begin formal monitoring of the Oakland grant, and the state agency will request all documentation on the project from the city of Oakland.

Continue reading →

FILED UNDER: Politics, Cal-GRIP, Call-ins, Department of Human Services, Measure Y, Oakland, Oakland Police Department
August 23, 2011 | 5:52 PM | By

Oakland’s gang injunctions & call-ins: are they compatible?

Ali Winston

Fruitvale injunction defendant Rubel Leal addresses the Oakland City Council on May 17, 2011

[N.B. This post has been updated to reflect the difference in Oakland Police Chief Anthony Batts' comments following the shooting of Carlos Nava and the actions of Councilmembers Ignacio De La Fuente and Larry Reid]

The call for more gang injunctions in Oakland has become a full-court press over the past week following the killing of 3-year-old Carlos Fernandez Nava. At an August 11th press conference about the arrest of Nava’s alleged shooter, Police Chief Anthony Batts said it was time Oaklanders took a serious look at gang injunctions:

“Enough with excuses, enough with not doing the right thing, enough with not addressing injunctions, not wanting to do curfews, enough with not taking hard stances,” Batts said. “Because enough life has been lost.”

Oakland Councilmembers Ignacio De La Fuente and Larry Reid took the Nava shooting as an opportunity to call for additional injunctions in West and East Oakland in addition to a citywide youth curfew.  A sharp uptick in homicides and gun violence is the impetus for the outcry for these anti-crime measures.

In a Sunday editorial, the Oakland Tribune called for the implementation of a citywide youth curfew to curb youth violence. Were Oakland to pass a curfew, either youth themselves or their parents, or both, could be fined if they fail to obey. Tribune columnist Tammerlin Drummond also came out in support of further injunctions and a curfew to rein in the city’s crime rate last week.

“Things will never improve until our city and community leaders are willing to invest the time, energy and money to craft a comprehensive strategy for attacking the rampant street killing,” Drummond wrote last Monday.

There has been vocal opposition to gang injunctions since former City Attorney John Russo filed Oakland’s first such case against nineteen alleged members of a North Oakland gang in early 2010. Though the North Oakland injunction was approved by Alameda County Superior Court Judge Robert Freedman with little opposition, a substantial community mobilization against the injunctions and a team of pro-bono defense attorneys dragged out the passage of Oakland’s second injunction against Norteños in the Fruitvale over several months of court hearings.

Continue reading →

FILED UNDER: Politics, Cal-GRIP, Call-ins, curfew, Gang Injunctions, Oakland, Oakland Police Department
March 25, 2011 | 10:28 AM | By

Do call-in programs work?

All week, NPR has been highlighting efforts at reducing gang violence in Chicago, like the Ceasefire program. Oakland has turned to similar measures–instituting “call-in” programs that use a carrot-and-stick type approach to getting gang members out of criminal life.

Call-ins bring violent offenders face to face with police and attorneys so they can access services such as education and employment training. Sounds like a smart idea, but call-ins have their critics.

Jeff Baker, who was Assistant to the City Administrator when this program began two years ago, voiced skepticism about its strategy:

JEFF BAKER: Ultimately, what the police departments do is they enact a series of arrests. They go to hotspots, they arrest almost anything that moves. As a result, after a 3-4 month period, you have thousands of arrests of young black and brown men, all under the auspices that they’re gang members. And the police department is to offer up no explanation or criteria of what makes a gang member. Because you and I are on the corner together, are we gang members?

A year-and-a-half into the initiative, where does Oakland’s call-in program stand? The following piece looks at the program, its criticisms, and how the strategy fits into the city’s efforts to obtain gang injunctions. (Audio above, transcript after the jump.)

Continue reading →

FILED UNDER: Police, Call-ins, Gangs, Oakland, Operation Ceasefire