Facing down Chevron campaign spending and Bank lawsuits was possible for the Richmond Progressive Alliance because of years of good and innovative government, including the following:
Per The Nation's Headline:
How One California City Began Bringing Its Murder Rate Down—Without Cops
Sub-headline:
While other cities have embraced heavy-handed policing tactics, Richmond, California, has offered mentoring and money to its most at-risk young men.
Text (by Heather Tirado Gilligan):
the Office of Neighborhood Safety (ONS) ... defines high-risk as young men—as old as 25 and young as 13—who have likely been involved in previous homicides and shootings ... [and] asks them to sign up for an eighteen-month program called an Operation Peacemaker Fellowship. Over a year and a half, fellows develop and follow a “life map”—concrete steps they’ve laid out to build a different kind of life.
In exchange for an agreement that they will put their guns down, ONS helps them reach those goals, with assistance that includes a monthly stipend of up to $500 in the final nine months of the program for fellows who are following through with their plans. They also connect fellows to job opportunities and social services.
“They need structure,” [Neighborhood Change Agent] Muccular explains. “They love someone to tell them, ‘look, you are not going to do that. You are better than that.’”
Results?
Though the drive-bys and shootings have continued, the homicide rate in Richmond has dropped significantly since the fellowship program began in 2010. Shootings took the lives of twenty-one people in 2010, twenty-six people in 2011 and eighteen people in 2012, a huge reduction from 2009’s record-high forty-seven murders. “We have evidence here, now, in Richmond, that says that people have changed,”...
Funding:
Richmond ... facing a $20 million budget deficit, ... will be ... cutting $580,000 from the ONS budget. At press time, Boggan had lost three of his staff as a result of the deficit. ONS now has only four outreach workers.