Ceasefire, Oakland’s gun violence prevention program

For more than half a century, Oakland has suffered a seemingly intractable epidemic of violence. According to one study, between 1985 and 2017 the city saw an average of 107 homicides each year, a level as high as six times the state and national averages. Over 4,000 people were killed in Oakland from 1985 to present, most of them by someone with a gun.

There were some periods of decreasing violence. One of the biggest drops was between 2013 and 2018, when shootings fell by 20% and homicides by 31%.

City leaders have credited this historic five-year decline in violence to a program that launched in 2012, called Ceasefire.

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