Advance Peace has success in preventing youth violence. Why did Sacramento leave it?

BillieDee Scott, whose younger brother Bill Scott was killed near Grant High School in 2023, wonders what would have happened if the city hadn’t ended its relationship with Advance Peace, a violence prevention program.

Bill was a Grant High School senior who wrote poetry, played football and gave a graduation speech about the power of avoiding conflict.

“Miscommunication and misunderstanding plays a major role in situations that can easily be solved,” Scott told his classmates in 2023. “We have the power to shift that narrative.”

Days after giving that speech, he was caught up in a petty dispute involving rival youths. He was shot in the leg while riding in a car and bled out. He was 18.

BillieDee said she doesn’t follow the politics of violence prevention, but said she is troubled to learn that the city had, for years, been funding violence prevention organizations it has not watched closely instead of one that had a record of being effective.

The Sacramento City Council recently restored funding to it youth violence prevention programs as it deliberated on how to close its $66 million budget deficit. These are programs that replaced Advance Peace.

“Someone should have been paying attention,” she said.

Advance Peace legacy

Advance Peace is a nonprofit that began in Richmond, California, where it helped dramatically reduce one of the state’s highest homicide rates. It expanded to Sacramento in 2017 following a series of gang-related killings. Within two years, the youth homicide rate in the program’s target areas fell to zero over an 18-month period.

A 2020 University of California, Berkeley study found that the 12 mentors, all ex-felons who had been hired to guide individuals deemed at high risk of becoming an active shooter, had a dramatic effect. Not only had youth homicides dropped from six the previous two-year period to zero, but overall firearms assault rates in areas of the city that Advance Peace served had also fallen 25%.

In Fresno, the UC Berkeley study found Advance Peace likely prevented 66 murders or shootings with injuries in two years and saved the city between $57 million and $158 million. In Woodland, former police chief Derek Kaff called the results “remarkably effective.”

Julius Thibodeaux, was the local director for Advance Peace and said the program was effective and well-managed.

“People ask how we could have had that kind of impact,” he said. “Was it a fluke? But it wasn’t actually complicated. We would catch wind of something and swoop in like Navy Seals. You have to be able to go to a young person who is hurt and teach them not to retaliate, to retrain their brains not to act out of emotions.

He added: “Another part of the reason we were structured was we had a good and transparent structure. These were good jobs with benefits and health insurance. If you have spent decades in prison, that right there is incredible.”

During the pandemic in 2020, Flojaune Cofer, then a public health expert and today a candidate for Sacramento County Supervisor, volunteered her backyard for sessions with program participants.

“The kids called it the ‘Floasis,’” recalled former Office and Violence Prevention Director Khaalid Muttaqi. “She brought them lemonade and brought in her network of experts — psychologists, creative writing instructors.”

“These were former and current gang members from different parts of the city, which meant they were rivals,” Cofer said. “And I saw those differences melt away.”

The demise in Sacramento

“It was phenomenal, unprecedented,” recalled Chet Hewitt, board chair of Advance Peace and president of the Sierra Health Foundation, which helped fund the program. “And the response was to dismantle that system.”

In March 2020, then-City Manager Howard Chan told then-Office and Violence Prevention Director Khaalid Muttaqi the city was moving in a different direction and he either needed to be fired or to resign.

“I cared about my job, but I cared more about the mission,” Muttaqi said. “I hoped they would continue with the direction which had reduced violence levels dramatically, so I left quietly, hoping for the best.”

Today he is the chief operating officer for Advance Peace. Chan replaced Muttaqi with Nicole Clavo, a psychologist and anti-violence advocate, whose son J.J. had been shot and killed in 2015. Chan did not respond to requests to comment.

“Behind closed doors, Howard disparaged Advance Peace, suggesting that Advance Peace was essentially skimming money,” said former City Councilmember Katie Valenzuela. “I would say, ‘that’s a serious allegation Howard, can you show me some evidence?’ He never did.”

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In September 2020, the city told Advance Peace it was subjecting the organization to a rigorous audit going back three years.

“Per provision #6(c) of the attached contract, the City wants to exercise its right to ask for financial records from December 2017 to present,” an email from Ginger Weagraff, a city manager employee, cc’ing Clavo, said.

Advance Peace provided the records, which included details about how its employees had spent their time working with hundreds of what the organization calls “fellows” who are considered at risk of pulling a trigger.

But Chan decided not to continue with Advance Peace. Chan also placed the OVP program under the police department.

David Muhammad, co-founder of the National Offices of Violence Prevention Network, a consortium of 70 city and county agencies, said Sacramento’s OVP is unlike others in the country. He said being connected to law enforcement injects credibility issues with the people they are trying to help.

“If they think you’re connected to law enforcement, there will be credibility issues,” he said.

“For me a hard and fast rule is this kind of program cannot be under the police department,” Kaff said. “It works being at arm’s length.”

Reaction to the change

The decision by Chan created a stir at a City Council meeting eliciting dozens of public comments questioning the new direction.

Former City Councilmember Larry Carr recalled that he was dismayed that Advance Peace was discontinued because it was clearly working, and disagreed with a police-led OVP, calling it an “insurmountable obstacle for building the trust needed for the program to work.”

In response to the backlash, in March 2021, Chan wrote to the City Council that the meeting had focused on Advance Peace and had excluded the now-police-led OVP.

“I am stunned and disappointed to learn that a meeting on public safety was convened by Advance Peace (AP) and Sierra Health Foundation without an invitation to anyone from our newly-created Office of Violence Prevention or the Sacramento Police Department.”

Chan concluded: “To be clear, we will be making an announcement and contract award in early April, but it will not include AP.”

Paris Dye, the executive director for Impact Sac, which received city funding as one of the replacement organizations to Advance Peace, said she understands how working directly with the police department can create concern in disadvantaged communities.

“The police department shouldn’t be the only place which is doing violence prevention,” she said. “Our relationship with Sac PD has been a positive thing. What I tell the kids is I don’t need you to trust the police department. I need you to do what they say. If they say stop, I need you to stop.”

The loss of Bill Scott

Felipe Ferraz taught Bill Scott at Alice Birney, a public Waldorf-inspired school, for eight years before Scott enrolled at Grant High School. He said he was deeply touched by his violent death.

“I feel like Bill was in many ways my son,” he said. “That’s what it is like when you are with a kid for eight years. It wasn’t always easy, but I loved the guy so much. He was full of life.”

Muttaqi thinks about Sacramento often and the lives he is convinced have been lost because of poor oversight.

“When we lose another young person to violence, like Billy Scott — did we lose a great artist?” he said. “Someone who would grow up to be mayor?”

Ferraz said that if the city’s violence prevention programs are not being run flawlessly, it would be a mistake to simply cut them.

“If there are problems with this system, it’s everyone’s responsibility to create checks and balances so that these programs continue and can save lives,” he said.

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