OAKLAND, CA– Young men at risk of succumbing to gang violence sit at tables in an Oakland church. They are accompanied by prosecutors, clergy and shooting survivors determined to show them they have more to look forward to than prison, injury or death.
The message is not a message of punishment, but of continuous support. The guys start getting turned on.
“We’re going to talk about keeping you and the ones you love alive and free,” Jim Hopkins, pastor emeritus of Lakeshore Avenue Baptist Church, says he told the men gathered at his church. “If you put down your gun and start taking away (city) services, we will help you find another way.”
A California city has seen homicides drop to historic levels, and experts say part of the credit goes to a program that identifies people most likely to be drawn into gang violence and pairs them with life coaches to help turn their lives around.
City officials meet weekly to review recent shootings and identify participants. The city’s Violence Prevention Department seeks out and talks with these people, one-on-one or in a group session at church, and offers a range of services, including a life coach.
There’s no single reason why the city’s homicide rate is down, but officials say the Oakland Ceasefire Lifeline program has been key, making a difference one person at a time.
Its homicide rates It landed in major cities across the United States in recent years, but the transformation in Oakland has been particularly dramatic.
Murder rates haven’t been this low in the city of about 400,000 since 1967, when the Black Panthers were a powerful force and hippies invaded nearby San Francisco for the Summer of Love.
For nearly 25 years, Oakland has been among the most dangerous cities in the country. The city police recorded annual homicide rates ranging from 16.2 to 36.4 deaths per 100,000 people, while the rate in the United States ranged around five per 100,000 people.
Oakland adopted the Lifeline program, which originated in Boston, after gun violence in 2011 left three children ages 1, 3 and 5 dead in separate incidents. The city recorded a 43% decrease in homicides from 2012 to 2017.
Officials then watered down the program until it was essentially dismantled during the pandemic, according to a 2023 review.
The number of homicides dropped from 118 in 2023 to 78 in 2024 only after city officials implemented changes recommended in the audit.
Last year, Oakland recorded a record low of 57 homicides.
Police are only involved in providing the names of people expected to retaliate for a shooting that injured or killed a friend or relative, or to be the victim of retaliation.
“People may underestimate how little clients believe in themselves, how little they value their lives,” said Holly Joshi, Head of Violence Prevention.
Once chosen, the men meet or become acquainted with people whose lives have been changed forever by gang violence, such as parents who have lost their children, or someone who has become paralyzed and unable to communicate except by clicking their tongue.
Last year, Bernard, a 27-year-old former gang member, was among 200 people matched with a life coach. He was contacted as he was leaving prison after serving six years for attempted robbery. Today, he has a full-time job, an apartment, and a new outlook.
He says he is more aware of community ties.
“When I was younger, I didn’t realize that I wasn’t just hurting myself. I was hurting everyone around me, everyone who cared about me,” said Bernard, who asked that his last name not be used because he feared sharing his background would hurt his future opportunities.
At first, Bernard was reserved with his life coach, Lasasha Long, 35.
But the young man who missed his mother’s funeral because he was still behind bars when she died has suffered another loss. A close childhood friend has died. He had to talk to someone.
“As soon as I called Sasha, she was there to offer advice,” he says.
I understood a long time ago. She had a chaotic upbringing, moving between relatives after a stray bullet killed her mother when she was a young child. She told him what she felt would help her move forward: that he had lost a lot, but he had a lot to live for as well. She reminded him that his friend wanted him to live.
He listened.
“I can’t take credit for it because he was the one who did it. He was the pilot,” she says, adding that she helped him on trips and reminded him of upcoming appointments. “But he wanted a change. He wanted it.”
Now, they talk on the phone every day. He made goofy faces at her while posing for photos for The Associated Press. She says she will be best man at his wedding one day. He says she is not a man. She says he didn’t see how beautiful she looked in the suit.
Long describes life coaching as “heart work,” helping a person see the light in a dark tunnel.
Bernard aspires to be like Long one day, a coach who can offer a lifeline to others who grew up surrounded by violence and with bills to pay. His mother was loving but addicted to drugs. His father was in and out of prison.
He discovered the joy of helping people.
One day, Bernard was on vacation from his job cleaning streets in San Francisco when he saw a teenager crash his bike. The old man wasn’t going to rush him, let alone reassure the embarrassed boy that everyone falls down sometimes.
But Bernard helped wash away the burned gravel on the boy’s face and jokingly told him: “Tell your girl you jumped.”
“All some of us need is to see or know that people care,” he said. “Once people realize that, I think they start doing better, and they want to do better. They think there’s more to life.”