Richmond, California
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Publius
1 November 2026.
Credit is a present-tense word. No one has ever stood up and said, “I would like to claim credit for something that happened in 2005, and I would like it noted that a dozen other people were in the room.” Credit gets claimed now, about a past that the record keeps in more detail than anyone cares to recite.
So consider the record of the Office of Neighborhood Safety, which has operated since 2007 and was the subject of a study before the Council on October 27. It arrived by sequence, and the sequence has several names in it.
On October 15, 2005, Mayor Irma Anderson held an all-city conference, Richmond Rises Above the Violence, in the city auditorium. An organizer who kept the original documents counts 346 people in attendance, and the keynote was a Harvard public-health scholar. The organizers looked at the Boston model, and at others then in use, and the conference was, in that organizer’s words, a catalyst for the Council’s later decision on staffing for violence prevention. The City still credits the Mayor with encouraging a public-health approach.
A month later the Council’s agenda for November 15 carried two items. L-3, in the Mayor’s name, was a resolution declaring a public health approach to anti-violence planning and youth investment the City’s highest priority. N-1, in Councilmember Tony Thurmond’s name, called for a discussion of action steps. By unanimous consent the Council took the two together. Councilmember Thurmond urged a direction to the City Manager and staff for short-term strategies. Six members of the public spoke, among them Corky Booze, Andres Soto and Tina Westbrook. On a motion by Councilmember Marquez, seconded by Councilmember Richard Griffin, the Council adopted the resolution unanimously. The Clerk’s certified copy is Resolution 162-05, and it names the October conference among the studies behind it. It set a goal of bringing the homicide and violent-crime rate down to the national average or below within ten years, and it promised regular reports from the City Manager. The minutes add that the City Manager was to appoint a lead person to gather data and bring a proposal back on December 6.
On December 6, as directed, City Manager Bill Lindsay recommended that hiring an anti-violence coordinator be considered. On January 10, 2006, the Council created the post, 8–1, on a motion by Councilmember Maria Viramontes, seconded by Councilmember Thurmond.
That June the Council voted 8–0, with one member absent, on a motion by Councilmember Nathaniel Bates, seconded by Vice Mayor Viramontes, to contract with The Mentoring Center to help establish an Office of Violence Prevention. In July a second contract approval passed unanimously, moved by Councilmember Richard Griffin and seconded by Councilmember Viramontes. The minutes name the consultants, and DeVone Boggan is among them.
In 2007 the work came back under a new name and a new mayor. On April 3, an agenda item to develop an Office of Neighborhood Safety and begin hiring a director stood in the names of Mayor Gayle McLaughlin and Councilmembers Tony Thurmond and Harpreet Sandhu, and on the Mayor’s motion, seconded by Vice Mayor Bates, the Council authorized the City Manager to begin the hiring process, unanimously. On June 26 the Council funded the director and clerical staff by Resolution 69-07, 8–1, and held the rest of the program for review. On July 17 it approved the staff recommendations to establish the Office of Neighborhood Safety, on a motion by Vice Mayor Bates, seconded by Councilmembers Jim Rogers and Thurmond. The same night it created the classification of Neighborhood Safety Director, and no one voted no. By his own account, Boggan began as director on October 23.
Count them. A mayor, a City Manager, a nine-member Council whose movers and seconders pass the work along like a baton, a consulting team, and a director who had been among the consultants. Nobody in that sequence is missing, and nobody in it is alone.
The newest document is the study. Bruno and colleagues, at UC Berkeley, found that relative to a synthetic control of non-California cities, Richmond’s quarterly firearm assaults fell by about 61 percent, sustained, after mid-2010. They write that the Peacemaker Fellowship is “associated with” that decline and that the estimates are “not solely attributable” to it. A study with a control group and a model declines to give any single cause the whole credit. This seems a good standard for the rest of us.
I do not say that nobody deserves credit. Quite the reverse. Everybody on that list does, and the dates are there to prove it. The trouble with credit is that it is spoken aloud in the present by whoever is speaking, while the minutes are kept in the past by whoever is writing, and the two rarely compare notes. The minutes keep saying the same thing: nearly everyone.
— Publius
Sources: Council agenda, Nov. 15, 2005 · Resolution No. 162-05 · Council minutes, Dec. 6, 2005 · Council minutes, Jan. 10, 2006 · Council minutes, June 6, 2006 · Council minutes, July 18, 2006 · Council minutes, Apr. 3, 2007 · Council minutes, June 26, 2007 · Council minutes, July 17, 2007 · City of Richmond, Remembering Mayor Irma Anderson · JAMA Network Open, The Peacemaker Fellowship and Urban Gun Violence in Richmond · Council digest, Oct. 27, 2026