Last year Oakland blew it by not applying for a guaranteed state grant to combat crime. Now the city has missed out on another massive Federal grant project to fight violent crime. U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland yesterday announced the Justice Department is “doubling down” on its efforts to counter a surge in gun violence, with $78 million in new grants. That’s in addition to $350 million in federal funds previously awarded to cities with high rates of gun violence.
Among the cities that have received DOJ money are Hartford, St. Louis, Memphis, Washington D.C., Jackson MS and Houston. But Oakland doesn’t show up on the list.
Why not? There are several possible explanations. One is that, contrary to the conventional wisdom, Oakland is not among the cities that suffer most from gun violence, according to FBI data. Measured in terms of gun homicides per population, Oakland ranks seventeenth, behind such cities as Detroit, Atlanta, Cleveland, San Bernardino and Philadelphia.
On the other hand, gun homicides in Oakland have risen precipitously in recent years, and being seventeenth on a list of hundreds of U.S. cities places Oakland securely among the most dangerous cities in America. Yet I found no evidence that Oakland has ever applied for, much less received, DOJ funding to reduce gun violence. It’s not clear exactly who in city government is responsible for applying to such grants, but in most other instances it would be a city’s Violence Prevention director. Oakland’s Dept. of Violence Prevention has had a number of directors; there’s a revolving door over there, ever since founding director Guillermo Cespedes stepped down and was replaced by acting director Kentrell Killins. DVP has been plagued by numerous scandals, including sexual harassment, gender discrimination, unequal pay, and retaliation, and it may be that the department is too preoccupied with its own internal problems to bother with applying for funding grants. DVP’s current head, Holly Joshi, was appointed in November, 2023 by Mayor Sheng Thao.
DVP might have supported stronger policing, including hiring more officers, in its mandate to reduce violence. But the agency instead has focused on the “root causes” theory, and Joshi has so far failed to offer any positive proof of change, except to offer the usual clichés. “We really need to get going and produce some reductions in violence and increases in community safety,” she said on assuming office. “If we do those things I’m confident we’ll have deep investments.”
At any rate, Oakland seems to consistently miss out on opportunities for grant money from the State or Federal government, but given the precarious state of DVP, maybe the money would just disappear down rat holes or otherwise be misused and abused. What’s clear, to me at least, is that no city agency is going to rescue Oakland from our travails. Help will only arrive in the form of good parenting and a restoration of moral clarity in communities that breed a culture of gun violence.
Steve Heimoff