Berkeley is still months away from entertaining pitches for its gun violence prevention and intervention program but has decided on a basic framework for what the city wants.
In November 2022, the Berkeley Police Department and Goldman School of Public Policy teamed up to design a program, which took the form of an analysis by Michelle A. Verger, then a public policy scholar.
“First, Berkeley’s problem is in the context of skyrocketing gun violence nationwide and regionally. Second, the proliferation of ghost guns makes it even more difficult to suppress supply-side dynamics. Third, street-crew shootings and domestic violence make up some portion of shootings,” according to a summary of Verger’s report. “However, much gun violence is not categorized and cannot be attributed to any one cause.”
Shootings have increased every year since 2017, although there was a sudden decline from 2022 to 2023. Gunfire is primarily concentrated in South and West Berkeley.
Verger recommended four key prongs to combat gun violence:
- Problem-oriented policing along “gunfire corridors”: BPD would tailor intervention strategies based on trends in violence. Problems “must be defined specifically, information must be collected from sources outside the department and agencies must engage in a broad search for solutions,” according to Verger’s analysis.
- Street outreach workers: Also known as “violence interrupters,” these workers would typically come from a community-based organization, contracted with the city, “as credible messengers for peace,” Verger wrote. Since they can only be effective if trusted, “Information should not flow from street workers to police, but rather only from police to street workers in terms of intelligence,” she wrote.
- Social network analysis: Berkeley, like other cities, has a “large network” of victims, suspects and other people directly affected by gun violence, but “within that network is a denser, more interconnected network at the center,” Verger reported. “Likelihood of victimization is two to three times greater if one has a social tie to a victim.” After identifying people likely to be involved in future gun violence, police and outreach workers try to offer help or social services while dissuading future shootings.
- Social services: Verger recommended incentives like job training, stable housing alternatives, reentry services for community members leaving incarceration and other mental and behavioral health services, all meant to divert people who may be entering, reentering or maintaining criminal lifestyles.
Verger did not recommend that the city engage directly with recently wounded gunshot victims, but did say that there are several organizations already doing that work around Alameda County.
Gun buyback programs, she concluded, were low-cost but also had low results, with no evidence to suggest that they do anything to reduce instances of gun violence or the number of people committing it.
Verger identified seven locations where gunfire was most markedly concentrated:
- 63rd and King streets
- Acton and Russell streets
- Eighth Street and Channing Way
- San Pablo Avenue and Channing Way
- Durant Avenue at Sather Lane
- Harmon and Sacramento streets
- San Pablo Park, at Oregon and Park streets
Verger has since taken a job as a data and policy analyst for the city’s Office of the Director of Police Accountability. When she delivered her analysis — which she completed before coming to work for the city — to the City Council in January, it was “not a reflection of the position of the Director of Police Accountability or the Police Accountability Board.”
Verger’s analysis is a starting point for the city, but who the city may hire or how the work will be divided remains to be seen.
City staff will now look into whether to pursue a request for proposals or request for qualifications based on what Verger recommended, Carianna Arredondo, an assistant to the city manager and coordinator for the city’s “reimagining public safety” initiatives, told Berkeleyside. “The team is going to need to consult with field experts to inform their framework, whether it is going to be an RFP or RFQ,” Arredondo said.
The city hopes to get that next step rolling by spring, but either way, it should have a more comprehensive update sometime later this year, Arredondo said. In the meantime, the city is building a “steering committee” to reconcile the strategic recommendations from Verger’s analysis with the $1 million the City Council has so far allocated for the project. That $1 million will have to cover the cost of outreach workers, some social services and any other contracted work unless the city allocates more funding.
Critics have taken issue with the time it has taken — now more than three years — to get traction on the project.
“Everyone thinks that all we have to do is give a speech on council and bang the gavel and things will materialize,” said Councilmember Terry Taplin, who lives in and represents one of the districts most plagued by gun violence. “People have to realize that quality programs take time to set up, and they require resources.”
Taplin’s office spearheaded advisory group meetings on gun violence intervention and sponsored budget referrals for $200,000 in consulting in 2021 and $1 million in staffing in 2022 to get a program up and running.
Taplin said the process is significantly more complicated than, for example, finding an organization that could set up a specialized care unit all by itself, as Bonita House did.
“There’s a lot of liability and accountability; we’re talking about people who are survivors of shootings, survivors of group conflicts … we can’t just give someone a contract,” Taplin told Berkeleyside.
Taplin said he found a “common thread” when researching similar programs around the Bay Area: “It was a small number of people that are willing to fire a firearm, to shoot a firearm at another person. It’s a very small number of people willing to do that,” he said. “That’s why we see these clusters in these concentrated areas.”
While some attacks are targeted and personal, other instances, including those where there are gunshots reported but no injuries, “could be someone sending a message to someone in the area, or to the area as a whole,” Taplin said.
When the city began considering alternatives in 2020, they focused on so-called Operation Ceasefire programs like Oakland has employed but have since adopted the more general term “gun violence prevention” to refer to the program.
“We’ve stayed the course even when a lot of these initiatives were no longer in the headlines,” Taplin said. “It was very important that we do the groundwork.”
