We inch closer and closer to the day when we make it illegal to arrest black people for criminal acts. Worse, we inch closer and closer to when we pay all black individuals a monetary sum to not commit crime.
To Fight Rising Murder Rate, More Cities Find, Mentor and Pay Likely Shooters: Advance Peace Fresno attempts to steer gang members who commit the most shootings away from crime, but opponents say stipends send the wrong message, Wall Street Journal, October 27, 2021
Some law-enforcement officials and political leaders have opposed the program.
Advance Peace Fresno’s $1.8 million budget comes from the city, state and nonprofit groups. Garry Bredefeld, a Republican city councilman, voted against funding the program because of the money provided to participants.
“I don’t know why we would give people stipends to do the right thing,” he said. “That is complete insanity and a misuse of taxpayer funds.”
Advocates say the stipends are important to keep participants engaged in the program.
“I know a lot of people who got allowances growing up, I know a lot of people who got a little extra dough when they did well in school” said DeVone Boggan, chief executive of Advance Peace. “These guys haven’t had a childhood.”
— Andrew Yang🧢⬆️🇺🇸 (@AndrewYang) October 28, 2021
Mr. Boggan [Tweet him] founded the program more than a decade ago in the Bay Area city of Richmond, Calif., to address a growing murder rate. He hired former gang members and ex-cons to identify and mentor young men who had spent time behind bars for shootings, had been shot themselves or were suspected in recent shootings.
In the first five years of the program, 94% of the 68 fellows were alive, 79% hadn’t been arrested or on gun-related charges, and 60% had received monetary incentives, according to an evaluation by the National Council on Crime and Delinquency, a nonprofit research group.
Jason Corburn, a University of California, Berkeley professor who has evaluated the group’s work in Sacramento and Stockton, Calif., said that over the course of an 18-month Advance Peace fellowship, less than $20,000 is typically spent on a cohort of 30 to 50 individuals and an average of 20 to 50 shootings are prevented.
“If you were an economist, you’d say that’s a great return on investment,” he said.
Last year there were 732 shootings and 74 murders in Fresno, compared with 374 shootings and 45 murders in 2019. In June, city officials agreed to fund a local Advance Peace program for three years.
After Advance Peace launched in Fresno, it began identifying the most likely shooters with a list from police that included people with recent firearms arrests or those suspected in recent shootings, said its local program manager, Aaron Foster.
Over half of the murders in this city of 542,000 surrounded by farms are gang-related, said Lt. Andre Benson who heads the police department’s gang unit. There are approximately 25,000 gang members or associates in Fresno, he said.
Mr. Foster, who used to be an active gang member and whose son and daughter were both shot to death, pored over the list with his employees, all of whom have been in gangs or grew up around them. They added some names and subtracted others; they now have 19 fellows aged 16 to 25.
Then came the hard part: getting gang members who get respect and money from their status as shooters to join the program.
Mr. Foster called 17-year-old Jaylin Johnson, whose nickname was “Lil Gunna” regularly, but couldn’t get him to commit. In late December, Jaylin was shot and killed.
With Devrick, Mr. Foster believed the best approach was to send an employee named Roger Brown, nicknamed Syrup, to recruit him. Devrick is an aspiring rapper, and Syrup is a well-known hip-hop artist in Fresno.
Devrick’s arrest for the shooting came as Syrup was trying to reel him in, a common occurrence, said Mr. Boggan. Fellows often don’t stop shooting initially because it takes time for Advance Peace workers to become an influential force in their lives, he said.
Hard to care about what’s happening around the world when local governments across the USA are actively working to decriminalize crime and then pay individuals who should be behind bars a monthly stipend just for not behaving in uncivilized ways and committing crime.
