Senator Barbara Boxer
announced the U.S. Department of Justice has decided to give more than $300,000 to fund Operation Ceasefire
, a campaign born out of Gavin Newsom's Mayor's Crime Summit
.
Operation Ceasefire will have two basic elements:
1) The strategy will bring the problem directly into the faces of chronic offenders. Law enforcement will set crystal clear standards for their behavior. If the chronic offenders thumb their noses at the police, as they have consistently done in the past, law enforcement will jump into action with a variety of tools to get them decicisively off the streets as quickly as possible.
2) The second half of the plan will involve tools to try and break the cycle of violence that is passed down from father to son endlessly. Operation Ceasefire will offer job training, employement and other programs intended to break the cycle.
The communities to be targeted with Operation Ceasefire are the Bayview - Hunters Point area and the Western Addition, the two neighborhoods in the City most prone to senseless violence, lawlessness, robbery and murder. Both these neighborhoods are primarily African-American. In those neighborhoods the prospect of injury or death from gunfire is greater than anywhere else in the City. They are the two most dangerous neighborhoods in which to live or even to visit. More information on city-wide gunfire injuries and death may be found here
.
Operation Ceasefire is a transferable strategy that may also be employed in other San Francisco neighborhoods if needed. Operation Ceasefire is a strategy from which the entire City will benefit, not only in the present moment, but in the future as well.
The Operation Ceasefire task force will be comprised of the San Francisco Police Department, U.S. Attorney'’s Office, FBI, ATF, DEA, California Bureau of Narcotics Enforcement, State Parole, District Attorney'’s Office, Adult Probation, Juvenile Probation and the San Francisco Sheriff's Department.
Not in My Home, Not in My Town
is a citizen organization that has developed as result of the growing number of killings. Endorsements for Not in My Home, Not in My Town include an impressive list of San Francisco community leaders and activists. The list may be read here
. Visit their web site and sign the pledge to help stop the violence now!
Operation Ceasefire is a step in the right direction. However $300,000 sounds like a lot more money than it really is. It will take much more than that amount and a dramatic increase in community support before we can effectively stop the cycle of violence. The effort must involve a three-part strategy involving education, employment programs and law enforcement.
An ideal, fully-funded program would be a three-pronged effort involving a coalition of law enforcement agencies, as we see with Operation Ceasefire, and two other vital coalitions: one involving educators, teachers, counselors and therapists to provide education-related services, and the other coalition involving local businesses and major San Francisco employers to provide employment opportunities.
For the moment we have only Operation Ceasefire. Let's hope it helps!
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