Here’s what California should do to address violence

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OPINION – When I first met E.W., he was 20 years old and had already been shot on three separate occasions. We offered him an opportunity to change the trajectory of his future through our Operation Peacemaker fellowship. Since completing the fellowship, he has graduated from a four-year university, is working and is raising his family in a healthy, nurturing environment.

For the last 17 years, I have dedicated myself to helping people like E.W. through a single project: reducing violence in our city. I have held almost every position that the Richmond’s Office of Neighborhood Safety – an organization I now help lead – has offered. In nearly two decades of work, our office has turned innumerable young lives around and interrupted dangerous cycles of retaliatory violence. The results speak for themselves: In 2025, Richmond had five homicides compared to 47 when our program first began in 2007.

Right now, California has the opportunity to follow Richmond’s model, potentially leading to huge reductions in gun violence across the entire state. A bill called AB 2378 would create a statewide Office of Community Violence Intervention, installing a director to provide unprecedented support for violence intervention infrastructure and field needs.

Richmond’s success in saving lives is not singular. Since 2022, California has invested over $350 million in the California Violence Intervention and Prevention Program (CalVIP), including a new $107 million funding round announced last month, which supports programs like ours. Alongside Richmond, many CalVIP grant recipient cities have experienced substantial declines in homicide rates. San Francisco and Oakland both had their lowest homicide totals since the 1950’s and 60’s, respectively. Modesto and East Palo Alto both had zero homicides in 2025.

The Bureau of State and Community Corrections (BSCC), which oversees CalVIP, has done a solid job of directing funds. But it ultimately doesn’t have the capacity or expertise to grow the community violence intervention field. As funding has increased, so has the risk that the CalVIP program loses fidelity to real community violence intervention (CVI) work.

When what counts as CVI is expanded too broadly, the risk that funds will be used on programs that do not follow a proven model soars. Or limited CVI funds become diluted with programs which may do important work — but work that isn’t actually community violence intervention. People and organizations seeking funding have begun to treat CVI as anything that can be said to reduce violence, when in reality it is a specific set of non-punitive, community-led strategies that interrupt the transmission of violence by engaging those at highest risk.

To prevent this, we need guardrails. We need experts sitting at the table where the money is distributed and the policies are written. We need a Director of CVI who has deep experience in the CVI field, which AB 2378 would create.

We’ve already proven that appointing a CVI expert to oversee CVI investments can succeed nationally. The Biden administration took the historic step of bringing a respected CVI leader into the Department of Justice to oversee federal intervention programs. This leader, Eddie Bocanegra, represents what AB 2378 could achieve for California: an expert who understands every level of the violence intervention field and who can oversee the distribution of millions of dollars.

Granted, there are people who don’t want to see our field grow and who will try to block the effort. Already, the gun lobby has opposed AB 2378, arguing that it creates new bureaucracy at a time when the state is facing financial strain – but the reality is the exact opposite. CVI actually saves the state money. In 2023, our office helped Richmond and the state save between $7.5 and $20 million in costs associated with homicides and shootings. Similar results have been shown in Sacramento. The gun lobby also ignores the fact that AB 2378 leverages existing revenue streams that fund CalVIP and would allow for those dollars to be used to administer the program.

Recently, I testified before the Assembly Public Safety Committee in support of AB 2378 and found the less than two minutes I had to share Richmond’s story insufficient. How do you fit nearly 20 years of work into two minutes? I have seen Richmond become one of the safest cities in the state, in part because of the office I work for. I hope to be here another 20 years from now, sharing how the state followed Richmond’s example and created an Office of Community Violence Intervention that has made all of California safer.

Sam Vaughn is the deputy director of community services at the Richmond Office of Neighborhood Safety.