Governor Newsom,

As California begins to turn the corner on the COVID-19 pandemic, another deadly public health crisis rages on, without a fraction of the attention or resources to combat it. Amid economic fallout and record-setting gun sales, communities across the country are facing an alarming spike in shootings, homicides, and trauma. The onset of the COVID-19 pandemic ushered in an unprecedented rise in community violence. In 2020, the US suffered the largest one-year rise in homicides on record. Here in California, this disturbing trend has carried into 2021: from January to April, gun homicides are up almost 50% compared to the same period in 2019.

Last year, in communities like Oakland, almost as many people died from homicide as from COVID-19. Although this violence continues to pose such a clear and present danger, especially in communities of color already hit hard by structural racism, health inequities, police brutality, and divestment, California has failed to mount a direct response. Like the Covid-19 pandemic, violence has imposed an enormously unequal toll on communities of color in our state, where violence is the leading cause of death for young Black men and boys. This is unacceptable.

Fund Peace California, a broad coalition of violence prevention and intervention practitioners, community members, survivors of violence, advocates, researchers, and city leaders from across the state, are calling on California to respond to this ongoing crisis with an unprecedented investment in community-based public safety. For far too long, California has overinvested in reactive responses to violence that have disproportionately harmed Black and Brown lives, and underinvested in proactive, community-based solutions that have been shown to save lives.

This is a time of unique challenge and unique opportunity: California is set to receive unprecedented resources from the federal government to address COVID-19 and its related harms. The time to act is now, which is why we are calling on Governor Newsom and the California legislature to invest $1.31 billion from the American Rescue Plan (ARP) to support and expand community-based violence prevention and intervention infrastructure over the next three years. Governor Newsom’s proposed budget for FY2021-2022 provides for $13.1B in funding for the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation. At a minimum, California should be investing one dollar in proactive violence prevention and intervention services for every ten dollars spent on incarceration.

Success that Needs to be Scaled Up

At the local level in California, this shift toward community-based public safety is already taking place, with incredible results.

• Los Angeles, for example, has developed a coordinated, citywide strategy to address serious violence. Results from a 2020 evaluation show that actions taken by the city-funded Gang Reduction and Youth Development (GRYD) network reduced gang retaliations by 41.2% in south Los Angeles alone. Researchers also determined that overall violent crime declined by nearly 20% in areas exposed to GRYD services. At the heart of the GRYD strategy are violence prevention and intervention professionals with deep ties to their communities and a commitment to addressing the root causes of violence.

• Stockton has also implemented an Office of Violence Prevention and Advance Peace, an intensive intervention program for those at highest risk of engaging in violence. Researchers from UC Berkeley found that between October 2018 and September 2020, Advance Peace Stockton contributed to a 21% reduction in gun homicides and assaults city-wide compared to 2015-18 averages, with some districts experiencing reductions as high as 47%. According to estimates from the National Institute for Criminal Justice Reform estimates that Stockton’s community-based initiative has saved $122 million in costs associated with firearm homicides and assaults.

• In Richmond, since launching the non-law enforcement Office of Neighborhood Safety in 2007, the city has seen a 65% reduction in homicides. A study found that Richmond’s Operation Peacemaker Fellowship, an intensive violence intervention program, contributed to a

However, in most cases, the gains that have been made in California have come despite an almost total lack of intentional support from the state. To reverse the spike in violence brought on by Covid-19, accelerate the pace of progress on this issue, and truly bring peace to California communities, a bold new investment is needed.

A $1.31 billion investment would not only help to fully fund the California Violence Intervention and Prevention Program, the state’s only direct investment in violence prevention and intervention programming (which is woefully underfunded), it would also help to build out a variety of complementary programs to support the field. This would include an investment in smaller, community-based organizations that lack the infrastructure to leverage state and federal grants, expand California’s supply of technical assistance providers, develop training and certification programs for professionals in the field, ensure that all frontline workers in this field who are risking their lives to make their communities safer are at least earning a living wage, develop a statewide Office on Community Violence, and help to expand innovative and promising practices, such as diversion programs for individuals charged with illegal gun possession and to fund non-law enforcement emergency responses to certain crisis situations.

A Unique Opportunity: Federal Support from the American Rescue Plan Act

Fortunately, a tremendous infusion of flexible federal dollars is on its way to California. The American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) is a $1.9 trillion federal Covid-relief bill signed into law by President Biden in March 2021. Section 9901 of this bill directs hundreds of billions of dollars in more flexible federal aid and relief directly to states, cities, and counties. The Treasury Department has already stated that funds provided to “respond to the Covid-19 public health emergency” could be used to fund programs that address the pandemic's “second-order effects,” such as increased mental health, community safety, and violence prevention needs. The Biden administration has also signaled that Covid-response funds should be directed broadly and that funding community violence intervention to respond to record spikes in homicide are a critical national priority.

The American Rescue Plan uses even broader language than Covid-relief bills enacted last year. It authorizes use of these funds to “respond to the public health emergency,” and its broader economic harms, and it also adds language explicitly authorizing use of these funds to support essential workers and agencies or organizations that employ essential workers (such as street outreach workers, and community safety, public health, and behavioral health professionals), and to backfill cuts made to government services during the pandemic. In short, ARPA funds can and should be used to expand California’s capacity to address spikes in violence with community-oriented solutions and to support the frontline violence prevention professionals that have been putting their lives on the line for decades and doubly so during the pandemic.

For too long, California has lagged far behind other states when it comes to investing in community-based public safety. In December 2020, Massachusetts’ Republican Governor signed a budget investing just under $25 million in programs like CalVIP for a state with 1/12th as many gun homicides as California. Independent researchers have confirmed that this is money well spent: Massachusetts taxpayers have saved up to $7.35 for each dollar invested in these programs, and 15-30-year old’s are almost half as likely to be the victim of a fatal shooting in Massachusetts compared to our state.

A Call to Fund Peace in California

Fund Peace California’s members call on Governor Newsom and members of our Legislature to make the Golden State a shining example to the rest of the nation of what we can achieve when we invest in people, not prisons, in being proactive rather than reactive, and in healing trauma instead of criminalizing it. We urge you to help make this vision a reality by investing at least $1.31 billion of ARPA dollars into community-based responses to violence. . If we take community violence as seriously as we’ve taken COVID-19, we can finally make this epidemic a thing of the past.