Is "sloth" still a sin?

We at the Tazer get hit from time to time about how critical we are, or even that we don't know what we're talking about, but now you don't have to take our word for it. Today's Times says what we've been saying.

File this under "not quite news to us": Violence prevention is being talked about, but little is being done about it.

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Violence prevention efforts lag
RICHMOND: Organizers forming new city office to work on problem but warn that solutions will come slowly

By Karl Fischer
CONTRA COSTA TIMES

Neither snappy acronyms nor promises of police crackdowns accompanied a report this week to the City Council about recent violence-prevention efforts.

That alone made it unusual for Richmond city government, where discussions of how to combat endemic street violence traditionally begin and end with a Police Department tactical operation.

But the group of consultants hired to create a new Office of Violence Prevention offered an assessment starkly different from those heard around City Hall last summer, when a spate of shootings left many calling on the council to declare a state of emergency.

This effort will require a sustained political commitment from community leaders as well as uniformed officers. And the problem will take a long time to fix, they said.

"People want immediate, urgent responses, but that's not what this is about," said David Muhammad, director of the Mentoring Center, an Oakland nonprofit that works with at-risk youth.

Muhammad; Oakland Unified school board member Greg Hodge; and DeVonne Boggan, director of Oakland youth group Safe Passages, updated the council Tuesday on their work to develop the new Richmond office's structure and define what it does.

The city's yet-unhired violence-prevention coordinator will find ways to encourage cooperation among Richmond's patchwork of anti-violence stakeholders and serve as a collection point for public funding that individual groups might not attract on their own, the consultants said.

The office also will coordinate empirical analysis of local violent crime trends to better direct resources.

"Every day that a young person loses their life in this city, we know is a day we have not done what we are supposed to do," Hodge said. "We have gotten too accustomed to the fact that young people kill each other in the street. In many ways, it has gotten too normalized ... the burial of 15-, 16-year-olds."

Consultants already have begun a series of meetings with various constituencies in Richmond's anti-violence community to learn more about how the city can help them accomplish their goals, Muhammad said.

That will require diplomacy. The nonprofits, faith groups and city departments working on violence prevention in Richmond historically have competed for resources and attention.

For example, when the Mentoring Center received its one-year, $185,000 contract in June to create the office, some grumbled of perceived "outsourcing."

Muhammad lives in Richmond and serves as minister of the city's Nation of Islam mosque. But his work in violence prevention is best known in Oakland, where he serves as director of the Mentoring Center, a nonprofit that works with at-risk youth.

"Everything is going to Oakland. It's been months and there's not even an office for people to go to," said Corky Booze, a City Council candidate. "I think this was a gift to the Mentoring Center, and it's unfair to the people of Richmond."

Others worried that the ethnic composition of the consulting team that the Mentoring Center assembled for the project -- all black -- might send signals in a city where race plays an important role in city politics.

City Councilman John Marquez noted that a list of community leaders invited to advisory meetings for the project included no Southeast Asian presence and few Latinos. He recommended several people. Muhammad said his group would gladly include them.

"An ongoing theme has been that all of our services and programs are not coordinated, and we need to address that problem. They really get that," Richmond police Chief Chris Magnus said. "It seems like a good approach."

Andres Soto, a Richmond resident and Alameda County's violence-prevention coordinator, agrees that the city could benefit from better organization.

"I think the challenge ... is the paucity of infrastructure, and the funding for that infrastructure, for implementing a broad-based community response that addresses the root causes of violence in Richmond," Soto said.

Oakland and Alameda County have more and better-established programs, Soto said, but they need constant help to avoid redundancy and resource competition and to find collaborative opportunities.

Oakland in particular tends to dominate regional discussions about violence prevention. A dedicated city office will give Richmond more presence at that table, Muhammad said.

IF YOU GO: Richmond invites residents to hear about development of the city Office of Violence Prevention at a 6 p.m. meeting Sept. 28 in the Bermuda Room of the Richmond Memorial Auditorium, 403 Civic Center Plaza.

Staff writer John Geluardi contributed to this article. Reach Karl Fischer at 510-262-2728 or kfischer@cctimes.com.