For the past twenty years I have worked on helping to reduce retaliatory gun violence in some of our most dangerous environments in America. Today, this work is called Community Violence Intervention or CVI. I have watched this work evolve—from skepticism to proof of concept, to sustained impact.
CVI represents a national workforce of trained and highly skilled community leaders and teams that focus on reducing retaliatory gun violence in our most impacted neighborhoods. Effective CVI strategies center efforts on improving and increasing the health and life span of those at the center of firearm hostilities.
After watching Super Bowl LV this past Sunday, I was reminded of something simple: most don’t confuse yardage with touchdowns. You can move the ball up and down the field and dominate time of possession. You can win on the line of scrimmage. But if you don’t cross the goal line (or score on an adequate amount of field goals), you won’t win the game.
Community Violence Intervention (CVI) is at a similar inflection point. It has impactful leaders. It has an extraordinary workforce. It has standard operating procedures. It has innovative and impactful strategies. CVI has credibility within impacted communities. It also has financial resources, albeit spread thin and rarely meeting the scale of the challenge. And In 2025, CVI beyond a shadow of a doubt helped to reduce gun violence across the country in big ways. In essence, CVI is indeed gaining yardage. But this can’t be the only question we ask of CVI—-to move the ball forward. The question we must always ask is, are we scoring touchdowns? In this regard, the end zone for CVI must be clear: retaliatory gun violence must become rare and non-recurring within our most impacted neighborhoods over a prolonged period. Anything short of this is midfield play.
Richmond: Crossing the Goal Line
When we launched the first of its kind Office of Neighborhood Safety (ONS) in Richmond, California, in 2007, the city’s gun homicide rate was among the highest in the nation. Retaliatory shootings had been driving a deadly culture for years. The city was trapped in cycles of revenge. Richmond has moved from 47 homicides per 100,000 to sustained reductions. Richmond California hasn’t appeared on “most dangerous city” list due to gun violence in more than a decade. That transformation did not happen because we spread resources thinly across the entire population. It happened because we made a strategic decision: We went directly to and invested in those at the center of the violence.
In 2010, Operation Peacemaker (aka the Peacemaker Fellowship®) set out to intensively engage a small, rival group of individuals who were statistically most likely to shoot or be shot within three to six months. We committed to making an 18-24+ month investment into the health and wellbeing of the less than 30 individuals thought to be driving 70 percent of the city’s gun violence at the time. We did not generalize the intervention, and we did not apologize for its precision. And after this first cohort of fellows graduated in 2012, gun violence in Richmond began falling precipitously, year after year–13 consecutive years of reductions in retaliatory gun violence. Today, Richmond’s gun homicide rate sits near 5 per 100,000—its lowest since incorporation.
Since then, eight or nine fellowship cohorts have followed. And here is what is extraordinary: as retaliatory gun violence dissipated, the composition of future cohorts changed. This has allowed Richmond’s ONS to move its work further upstream—to include the prevention space. They also continue to water the life affirming culture their work has seeded. This is what scoring in CVI looks like.
The End Zone Is Culture Change
Recently, during a graduate seminar that I co-facilitate at UC Berkeley, two guest leaders from Richmond’s Office of Neighborhood Safety—Sam Vaughn and James Houston—fielded thoughtful questions from our students.
One student asked, “can someone without lived experience do this work effectively?” The answer from these leaders was “yes”.
These leaders clearly articulated that credibility can be transferable—if earned and stewarded properly. “Today”, noted these leaders, “the Office of Neighborhood Safety itself carries credibility. If you represent the ONS, the community assumes you are legitimate”. I can tell you that this reality did not happen overnight. It took nearly two decades of disciplined lane-keeping, fidelity, and results, to achieve this honorable position within and outside of city hall.
Another student asked, “whether it was now easier to partner with law enforcement, having become a trustworthy and trusted agency within the impacted community?” The answer was unequivocal, “absolutely not”.
Sam went on to communicate that “because the issues at play are bigger than any one group of people or one office of very credible messengers. The carceral system’s history of oppression is deeply embedded in current society and remains unreconciled in the most impacted communities – including in Richmond. As such, no matter how much trust I’ve garnered from within and outside of the impacted community, or how deeply my personal credibility is seeded in the ground because of who I once was in the community, as a CVI provider I must maintain clear distinguishable lines and distance with law enforcement. Healthy communication with law enforcement is necessary for ecosystem function and for my team’s safety. But proximity cannot become entanglement. Trust is oxygen in CVI work. Once compromised, the entire organism suffocates – in essence, what I do in Richmond under the banner of CVI can impact what folks are doing in Chicago under the same banner. We cannot underestimate this important insight.”
Then came the question and the answer I’ll never forget: “How have you sustained and deepened reductions in retaliatory gun violence for 13 consecutive years?” The answer was not a tactical one. It was cultural.
James responded: “You cannot incarcerate your way to culture change. You must influence the influencers. You must engage those who set the tone in the neighborhoods. The individuals most proximate to retaliatory violence are also often the most socially influential in those very neighborhoods. When they change, the culture shifts. Younger generations observe. Norms evolve. Conflict response patterns transform”. And then, as if tying a nice bow around James’ answer, Sam said something that stopped me in my tracks: “Our work, is doing more work than we are.” Tears flushed my eyes as my emotional self-shifted. “Wow”, I thought—”Touchdown!” That’s the end zone for CVI.
When Peacemaker fellows or CVI participants—the once most likely to shoot or be shot—become culture carriers for peace, retaliation slows because its most influential architects have changed course. When their lived transformation ripples outward and their presence alone deters retaliation, neighborhoods begin to heal. When those most proximate to violence change, everyone benefits. The end zone for CVI is when those on their transformational journey begin reshaping the culture by taking responsibility for how they think, feel, and act when confronted with conflict that once led to gun violence.
Precision Wins Championships
In football, you study film. You design specific offensive or defensive schemes to counter anticipated threats. You don’t defend the entire field equally. For example, on defense, you tighten coverage in the red zone. You identify the opposing team’s most dangerous threats and play to neutralize them. CVI must do the same.
Getting into the end zone for CVI requires disciplined focus on those at the center of retaliatory cycles of gun violence. Not everyone. Not broadly defined “at-risk.” Not symbolic engagement. The small number of individuals statistically most likely to drive the next shooting or be victim of it – those who create risk. Serving them is not favoritism. It is a touchdown scoring strategy that maintains a high scoring percentage. This is how CVI effectively reduces harm for everyone else.
When CVI rejects this specific focus—when funding mechanisms prioritize diffusion over depth—we risk conflating activity with success. Yardage with touchdowns. The communities we serve do not require more midfield activity. They require victories.
What Winning Actually Looks Like In CVI
Winning means:
- Sustained reductions in retaliatory shootings.
- Institutional credibility that outlives any one leader.
- Clear and respected boundaries within the public safety ecosystem.
- Cultural norms that increasingly reject firearms as conflict resolution.
- CVI participants whose transformation influences younger generations.
- Funding standards that reward verified impact, not proposal fluency, not political access.
- Work that, over time, does more work than we do.
Reaching the end zone in CVI necessitates substantial long-term investments that align with the magnitude of the challenge. Investments should be allocated to established, proven strategies that possess enduring viability rather than initiatives lacking demonstrable effects but mastering funder language—investments should be directed towards infrastructure that has demonstrated the ability to deliver optimal outcomes for our most vulnerable communities.
When CVI crosses the goal line into its end zone—durable culture change inside neighborhoods once defined by revenge, harm, and trauma is the result.
Where CVI Must Go
Community Violence Intervention (CVI) must mature into a permanent, disciplined, professional, and publicly resourced public safety partner. It must remain steadfast in its core purpose: to interrupt retaliatory gun violence by engaging those who drive it. Everyone working within the sector must fiercely protect its credibility and resist the temptation to focus on easy. As I often say about the Peacemaker Fellowship, “our work must become strong enough to counter the pull of the streets, the weight of history, the gravity of invisibility, and the momentum of bad habits.” When we achieve this, we will not merely reduce shootings temporarily. We will transform ecosystems. And in the future, more CVI leaders will sit in graduate seminars and confidently declare, “The work is doing more work than we are.” That is the moment you know you have crossed the goal line into the CVI end zone. And that is where Community Violence Intervention must consistently strive to go if we genuinely intend to succeed.
CVI has proven it can move the ball. The question now is whether we will remain disciplined enough to keep scoring touchdowns.