Oakland, a city of 435,000 residents, has long grappled with group and gang violence, primarily concentrated in the flatland communities of East and West Oakland. In 2012, Oakland had the sixth-highest murder rate among large cities nationwide, at 126 total homicides and 32 victims per 100,000 residents. In the last decade, Oakland has made significant progress in reducing homicides, cutting its per capita annual rate in half by 2018, but these reductions are not felt equally across Oakland. Economic and social repercussions of the COVID-19 pandemic contributed to a proliferation of violence in the second half of 2020, and the city ended the year with 102 homicides and a 60 percent increase in shootings with injury compared to 2019. Unfortunately, Oakland is currently on track to see its worst year of violent crime since the early 2000s if trends continue, with 65 homicides in the first six months of 2021. Overall homicide numbers in Oakland fail to convey the toll that non-fatal shootings, primarily driven by group and gang violence, take on residents. 

Oakland’s BCJI efforts will focus on the neighborhoods within eight contiguous police beats, covering a large area of East Oakland. According to US Census Data, within the BCJI focus neighborhoods, 23 percent of all residents and 32 percent of children under 18 live in poverty, meeting the poverty priority consideration for this solicitation. Oakland is one of the most ethnically diverse cities in the nation - 29 percent of residents are white, 27 percent Hispanic, 24 percent African American, and 20 percent Asian/Pacific Islander. Roughly half of the residents in the BCJI focus neighborhoods identify as Hispanic, and 34 percent identify as African American. No other racial groups experience the trauma from shootings and homicides in Oakland as acutely as African Americans and Latinos, who accounted for 51.7 percent and 27.7 percent of victims in 2019. The disproportionate impact on these communities has remained the same despite declining populations. The COVID-19 pandemic also induced a surge in violence against women, girls, and gender-nonconforming people resulting in a 77 percent increase in female-identified shooting victims. The local shelter-in-place orders also led to a significant uptick in calls to the 24-hour domestic violence hotline in 2020 - a 36 percent rise in services from mid-March to the end of June 2020, and the increase in the need for services continues. Like other major cities, most shootings and homicides in Oakland are driven by conflicts between violent groups or gangs, often in connection with drug trafficking and abuse. 

Residents in the BCJI focus neighborhoods are especially vulnerable to being victims or perpetrators of gun violence. Due to the high incidence of gun violence in East Oakland, most residents have social or familial connections to individuals directly involved in or impacted by such violence, and such exposure through personal relationships or social networks significantly increases the risk of future victimization or perpetration. 

There is also a lack of neighborhood retail and services - no banks, limited access to healthy food, and a critical need for more affordable housing. Regardless, Oakland has a lot of assets, including multiple public facilities (libraries, recreation centers, parks, and schools) and infrastructure assets. Moreover, the city’s people are perhaps its most significant asset, in that Oakland’s culture and diversity makes it the city that it is today: a community replete with artists and a hub for creativity, an engaged community involved in finding solutions to the problems of violence and poverty, and residents committed to racial and social justice. To address the systemic inequities in East Oakland, the city has prioritized investment in the BCJI focus neighborhoods and is seeking funding from all sources to address violent crime focus areas, homelessness, and the historic disinvestment in Oakland’s flatland neighborhoods.  

The project goals are shaped by Oakland’s commitment to equity and investing deeply in East Oakland and are consistent with DOJ’s BCJI Model as well as three of DVP’s public health, community-driven mandates to reduce: 

• Levels of gun violence, with a particular focus on group/gang shootings and homicides. 

• Family trauma associated with unsolved homicides. 

• Community trauma associated with violence.  

To meet these goals, Oakland plans to implement a Triangle Incident Response in East Oakland (TIREO), which is a coordinated crime scene or hospital bedside response, aiming to reduce retaliatory group/gang-related and interpersonal violence, reduce the levels of trauma experienced by individuals, families, and community members, and improve police-community relationships. The goals, objectives, and indicators of success for the proposed TIREO project are detailed below: 

• Address crime focus areas in East Oakland neighborhoods: identifying, interrupting, and reducing group/gang retaliation through mediation; implementing violence interruption with individuals and families immediately after a shooting event; formalizing data sharing efforts to understand best practices; and building the capacity of project partners to serve East Oakland better.  

• Engage the community in reducing collective trauma and solution building; interrupting and reducing the cycle of individual, family, and community trauma by providing services immediately after a shooting or homicide; developing community engagement plan with TCC; engaging the community in solutions and seeking resources to implement community solutions.  

• Enhance collaboration among criminal justice partners; coordinating TIREO activities through collaborative development and ongoing meetings; enhancing existing partnerships through implementation of TIREO activities.  

• Improve police-community relationships; humanizing the management of crime scenes and police responses to interpersonal violence to strengthen relationships between police and community; improving communication between OPD crime scene investigation staff, DVP Crime-Scene Response Advocates, and impacted families, peers, and neighborhood residents (bystanders).  

The Triangle Incident Response (TIR) involves coordination between the Department of Violence Prevention, Oakland Police Department, and community-based organizations that are funded to provide violence interruption and other shooting and homicide response services. The goal of this project is to reduce retaliatory violence, specifically gender-based violence (GBV), reduce levels of trauma experienced by impacted individuals, and improve relations between community and government partners. To achieve these goals, the grantee site, and its project partners, will implement the following strategies:

• Implement the TIR in response to shootings and homicides that result from GBV. 
• Improve information sharing between TIR partners through the development and implementation of a new data management system. 
• Develop and implement a neighborhood response protocol. 
• Conduct a process and outcomes evaluation of the TIR. 

Youth Alive! (YA!), Oakland Police, the Department of Violence Prevention, Oakland’s Transformative Climate Communities, Better Neighborhoods, Same Neighbors, Alameda County District Attorney’s Office, Alameda County Probation Department, Urban Institute