Program Profile: Operation Peacekeeper (Stockton, Calif.)

This is a focused-deterrence policing initiative designed to reduce gun homicide in Stockton, Calif., by providing gang-involved youth with positive alternatives to violence. The program is rated Promising. The intervention was associated with a statistically significant 42 percent decrease in the monthly number of gun homicides, compared with pre-intervention trends.

A Promising rating implies that implementing the program may result in the intended outcome(s).

A Promising rating implies that implementing the program may result in the intended outcome(s).

Program Goals/Target Population

The city of Stockton, Calif., averaged 35 gun homicides per year between 1990 and 1997 (Braga 2008). According to the 2000 Uniform Crime Report, Stockton ranked fifth with a violent crime rate of 1219.2 per 100,000 residents and seventh with a homicide rate of 12.3 per 100,000 residents (Federal Bureau of Investigation 2001). As a result, the Stockton Police Department (SPD) sought to implement an intervention modeled after the Ceasefire Initiative begun by the Boston (Mass.) Police Department, which used detailed information about gang activity to identify problem areas and reduce gang-related violence in the Boston metropolitan area.

Operation Peacekeeper uses a community and “pulling levers” focused deterrence strategy, to deter violent behavior by reaching out directly to gang members who chronically commit offenses, explicitly saying gun violence will no longer be tolerated, and enforcing that message by “pulling every lever” legally available when violence occurs (Kennedy 1997). The goal of this problem-oriented policing intervention is to reduce and prevent gang-related gun violence by gang-involved youth (ages 10–18) within all the areas of Stockton that have a serious gun homicide problem.

Program Components

Operation Peacekeeper uses a “pulling levers” approach, which includes: 1) convening an interagency working group of law enforcement practitioners; 2) conducting research to identify key offenders, groups, and behaviors; 3) framing a response to offenders and groups of offenders that uses a varied set of sanctions (“pulling levers”) to change offenders’ behaviors; 4) focusing social services and community resources on targeted offenders and groups to match law enforcement prevention efforts; and 5) directly and repeatedly communicating with offenders to make them understand why they are receiving special law enforcement attention (Kennedy 1997; 2006).

The SPD implements specific operational tactics, which include reassigning several patrol officers to a unit called the Gang Street Enforcement Team (GSET), who are meant to communicate a credible, clear message about the consequences of gang violence to youth involved in or at risk of being involved in gangs. GSET officers focus exclusively on violent gangs by targeting and responding to any illegal behavior, which can include offenses such as driving without a license or registration, drinking in public, and selling drugs. As a result of focused law enforcement attention, GSET officers are not obligated to perform regular patrol duties and are permitted to stay with a gang for as long as necessary to reduce violence.

Additionally, an interagency Peacekeeper work group was formed, which links efforts across all the local, county, state, and federal law enforcement agencies to work congruently on the problem of youth gang violence. The Peacekeeper working group members and social service and community-based partners send a direct message to violent gang members that they are “under the microscope” because of their violent behavior. The most common forum for communicating this message is through group meetings with youth on probation or parole who are at high risk of becoming involved in gang violence. Meetings are also held with at-risk youth at local secure facilities.

Key services provided through the Operation Peacekeeper intervention include employment services, wraparound services for youth and their families, and services designed to improve school performance. In addition, gang outreach workers (also known as youth outreach workers) work with the local Private Industry Council to provide jobs to gang-involved youth. In particular, gang outreach workers work in partnership with community probation officers, school officials, and other members of decentralized integrated service teams to offer a wide range of public and private services.

Key Personnel

The San Joaquin County California Youth Authority parole office; the California Department of Corrections parole office; the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (AFT); the FBI; and the U.S. Attorney’s Office are key participants in intervention efforts. In addition, Peacekeeper working groups partner with officials from San Joaquin County (such as the Center for Positive Prevention Alternatives) to focus social service and opportunity provision programs to provide targeted gang-involved youth with meaningful alternatives to violence (Wakeling 2003).

Program Theory

Operation Peacekeeper uses a “pulling levers” approach, which specifically applies principles of problem-oriented policing (Eck and Spelman 1987; Goldstein 1990). Pulling levers strategies are framed as problem-oriented policing exercises designed to prevent serious violence among gang-involved offenders (Braga 2002). Problem-oriented policing works to identify a problem and to form responses using a wide variety of (sometimes nontraditional) approaches. Specifically, problem-oriented policing uses a basic iterative approach of problem identification, analysis, response, assessment, and adjustment of the response. This adaptable and dynamic framework is found to uncover complex mechanisms relative to gang violence and develop specialized interventions to reduce gang-related victimization (Braga 2008).

Additional Information

Operation Peacekeeper began in 1997 as a law enforcement initiative to address gun violence among youth gang members in Stockton, Calif. The program is still in operation today; however, Operation Peacekeeper is now implemented as a violence prevention and intervention program for high-risk youth and young adults and their families, under the direction of the Office of Violence Prevention (OVP). As provided by OVP, Operation Peacekeeper is a more comprehensive program, which utilizes community partnerships to assist with violence prevention and provide youth with opportunities for a healthier, nonviolent lifestyle. As such, the program offers youth (referred to as clients) both a life coach and a variety of resources.

Study

Braga (2008) conducted a one-group time series design in Stockton, an urban mid-sized city in Calif., to evaluate the effects of a problem-oriented policing strategy called Operation Peacekeeper. The study author evaluated the effects of Operation Peacekeeper on citywide monthly numbers of gun homicide incidents from Jan. 1, 1990, to Dec. 31, 2005 (i.e., the study period). The study looked at the Operation Peacekeeper intervention when it was implemented as a law enforcement intervention from September 1997 to December 2002. There were no rival programs implemented during the intervention period.

The intervention was intended to address all areas of Stockton with a serious gun homicide problem. Therefore, there were no control areas (or control gangs) set within the city because 1) the goal was to implement a tactic that would address gun homicide wherever it presented in the city, 2) the target of the intervention was defined as the self-sustaining cycle of violence in which all gangs were caught up and to which all gangs contributed, and 3) the communications strategy was explicitly intended to affect the behavior of gangs and individuals not directly subjected to enforcement attention.

There were a total of 192 (monthly counts) gun homicide incidents observed during the study period, with 92 preintervention observations, 64 treatment months, and 36 posttreatment months. The outcome of interest was the monthly number of gun homicides. Data on the monthly numbers of gun homicides were collected from FBI Supplementary Homicide Report (SHR) data and the Stockton Police Department (SPD) Crime Analysis Unit. Gun homicide data for 1990–2004 were obtained from SHR data, and the SPD Crime Analysis Unit provided the gun homicide data for 2005. A negative binomial regression model was used to analyze monthly gun homicide trends during the intervention period. To estimate effects of the intervention on the monthly numbers of gun homicide, a multiple category dummy variable, controlling for other predictor variables (such as trends, violent crime rates, and seasonal dummy variables) was constructed to indicate whether the Peacekeeper intervention was present or not.

No subgroup analyses were conducted. However, a nonrandomized quasi-experiment was used to compare gun homicide trends in Stockton with gun homicide trends in other mid-sized California cities. The results from this analysis are available in the Other Information section.

Problem analysis research showed that criminally active gang members, who had ongoing disputes with rival gangs, were central to Stockton’s gun homicide problem (Braga 2008). The pulling levers strategy broadly fit the nature of the violence and was appropriately tailored to the characteristics and dynamics of local gangs and the operational capacities of law enforcement organizations, social service agencies, and community-based groups in Stockton.

Gang outreach workers (also known as youth outreach workers) are usually streetwise men and women trained in community organizing, mentoring, mediation, conflict resolution, and case management. These workers serve as mentors and positive role models for gang-involved youth. Specifically, their role is to make sure youth understand the consequences of violence and that there are positive alternatives to gang membership.

Additional information on Operation Peacekeeper intervention is available at https://www.stocktonca.gov/government/city_manager/office_of_violence_prevention/index.php 

Subgroup Analysis

Braga (2008) compared gun homicide trends in Stockton with gun homicide trends in eight mid-sized California cities: Anaheim, Bakersfield, Fresno, Long Beach, Oakland, Riverside, Sacramento, and Santa Ana. There were a total of 180 gun homicide observations (monthly number) for the eight cities. To isolate the impact of Operation Peacekeeper, a multivariate regression analysis was conducted to account for the impact of violent crime rates, trends, and seasonal variations on homicide trends in each city. None of the eight comparison cities experienced a statistically significant reduction in the monthly number of gun homicides that coincided with the Operation Peacekeeper intervention in Stockton.

These sources were used in the development of the program profile:

These sources were used in the development of the program profile:

Braga, Anthony. 2002. Problem-Oriented Policing and Crime Prevention. New York: Criminal Justice Press.

Eck, John E., and William Spelman. 1987. Problem-Solving: Problem-Oriented Policing in Newport News. Washington, D.C.: U.S. Department of Justice, Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention.

Federal Bureau of Investigation. 2001. Crime in the United States, 2000.

Goldstein, Herman. 1990. Problem-Oriented Policing. Philadelphia: Temple University Press.

Kennedy, David M. 1997. “Pulling Levers: Chronic Offenders, High-Crime Settings, and a Theory of Prevention.” Valparaiso University Law Review 31:449–84.

Kennedy, David M. 2006. “Old Wine in New Bottles: Policing and the Lessons of Pulling Levers.” In D. Weisburd and A. Braga (eds.). Police Innovation: Contrasting Perspectives. Cambridge, United Kingdom: Cambridge University Press, 155–70.

Wakeling, Stewart. 2003. “Ending Gang Homicide: Deterrence Can Work.” Perspectives on Violence Prevention No. 1. Sacramento, Calif.: California Attorney General's Office/California Health and Human Services Agency.

Following are CrimeSolutions-rated programs that are related to this practice:

Focused Deterrence Strategies

This practice (also referred to as “pulling-levers policing”) includes problem-oriented policing strategies that follow the core principles of deterrence theory. The strategies target specific criminal behavior committed by a small number of individuals who chronically commit offenses, such as youth gang members or those who repeatedly commit violent offenses, who are vulnerable to sanctions and punishment. The practice is rated Promising for reducing crime.

Evidence Ratings for Outcomes

Crime & Delinquency - Multiple crime/offense types

Problem-Oriented Policing

These analytic methods are used by police to develop crime prevention and reduction strategies. The practice is rated Promising and led to a significant decline in crime and disorder.

Evidence Ratings for Outcomes

Crime & Delinquency - Multiple crime/offense types

Reducing Gun Violence

Reducing gun violence is a persistent public policy concern for communities, policymakers and leaders. To reduce gun violence, several strategies have been deployed including public health approaches (e.g., training and safe gun storage); gun buy-back programs; gun laws; and law enforcement strategies. The practice is rated Promising for reducing violent gun offenses.

Evidence Ratings for Outcomes

Crime & Delinquency - Violent offenses

Why might a practice's outcome ratings differ from the ratings of specific programs encompassed by that practice?