Different types of gun violence affect different demographic groups. Gun violence in the form of gun homicide is a racial justice issue in that it does not affect all communities equally.
In contrast to the demographics of gun suicide, demographic studies have shown that shootings and gun-related deaths are found more frequently in areas with a history of racial segregation, concentrated poverty and community disinvestment.
Systemic social factors that drive inequality in housing, jobs, education and access to healthcare are the same ones that increase gun homicide. As a result, gun homicide is more likely to impact Black and Latinx youth than white youth.
Several local organizations are working to reduce gun violence. Some work on legislation, whereas others work to address mental health issues in an effort to reduce suicide. Advance Peace Fresno is a nonprofit that tries to address Fresno’s gun violence by stopping retaliatory shootings.
Advance Peace is a violence interruption program that recognizes the relevance of systemic social factors in gun violence. It seeks to address them by working with young people at risk of involvement in gun violence.
The program had a fitful start in Fresno in 2017, but has been funded by the City of Fresno through the Economic Opportunities Commission (EOC), among other sources, since 2020. The program helps participants develop self-control, anger management and problem-solving skills.
History of Advance Peace Fresno
After one of his sons was shot and killed in 2013, Aaron Foster, a co-founder of Advance Peace Fresno and its current program director, says that he had a lot of anger. He was thinking about and planning to retaliate, but his life was changed by Pastor Treena Turner of Faith in the Valley. She offered him a position in Faith in the Valley as a community organizer, where he channeled his anger into more productive efforts.
In 2017, Foster lost a daughter to gun homicide. He then started looking for what could be done on a larger scale to decrease gun violence in Fresno. He became aware of the Advance Peace program in Richmond, Calif.
After failing to get funding from the City of Fresno in 2018 and 2019, in 2020, amid the Covid-19 epidemic and an increasing number of homicides in the city, funding for the Advance Peace program was approved for the 2020–2021 budget by the City Council.
The program then recruited outreach workers called neighborhood change agents (NCAs). After training, the NCAs began their street outreach to individuals felt to be at high risk of participating in gang violence. The community violence prevention and intervention program using the street outreach model, and the intensive mentoring of the fellows, was launched in July 2021.
In December 2023, Professor Jason Corburn, with UC Berkeley’s School of Public Health and Center for Global Healthy Cities, in an assessment for the Fresno EOC, said that “Advance Peace reduces urban gun violence by engaging with the people most impacted by cyclical and retaliatory gun violence.”
He added that the program does so by using the NCAs to “engage those creating the gun violence risk on a daily basis, providing mentorship, helping mediate conflicts, managing anger and enrolling them in the Peacemaker Fellowship®,” a 24-month road map for activities, services and a transition to a more peaceful life.
Does Advance Peace Work?
As can be seen in a graph (top right) from the Fresno Police Department (FPD), there was a significant decline in homicides after the institution of Advance Peace in 2021. Although Advance Peace cannot take all the credit for this decline, there is no question that it has complemented the work of the FPD.
[insert HomicideRates.png]Image courtesy of the Fresno Police Department
It is apparent that working in parallel with the FPD, Advance Peace has helped decrease retaliatory shootings and firearm-related deaths in the city of Fresno.
Recent Setback
In April, the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) suddenly withdrew its 2023 grant to Advance Peace Fresno. The grant was part of the program’s $1 million annual budget, and it had used only $900,000 of the $2 million allotted in the three-year grant.
Other funding sources for Advance Peace include $375,000 from the City of Fresno and about $330,000 per year from the state’s Gun Violence Prevention and School Safety Act.
That act imposed an 11% excise tax on the gross retail sales of firearms, firearm precursor parts and ammunition, which is then used to fund gun violence prevention programs and school safety initiatives, such as Advance Peace.
With the loss of the DOJ funding, four of Advance Peace Fresno’s NCAs were let go, along with one full-time mental health worker. It is now down to five NCAs, one field coordinator and one program manager (Foster) to follow more than 50 fellows on a daily basis.
Foster says the program will continue to do the work but adds that, in addition to cutting staff, it might have to cut the stipends given to fellows who have been meeting the necessary benchmarks for at least six months.
Saving the City of Fresno Money
As of February 2025, the City of Fresno was facing a projected budget deficit of at least $20 million. On May 14, Mayor Dyer unveiled his proposed $2.36 billion budget for fiscal 2025–2026.
How the City’s budget will impact Advance Peace is not yet clear. In early June, the City Council will hold a series of budget hearings at which the public can comment on the proposed budget.
Council members will then file formal budget motions, seeking funds for their favored programs and initiatives that were not included in the mayor’s proposal.
Advance Peace should be seen as a cost-saving program for the City. The cost of a single homicide to the City was conservatively calculated in 2020 by the National Institute of Criminal Justice Reform to be $2.4 million and $864,000 per shooting injury. That includes police, judicial, medical and incarceration expenses, as well as lost wages and lost taxes.
If Advance Peace was responsible for preventing just one homicide or two shootings per year, the program pays for itself. If Fresno returns to having 70 murders a year, the homicide costs to the community could reach $168 million or more a year.
Programs that improve police-community relations and combine policing strategies with community engagement such as those provided by Advance Peace have proven effective.
Even in the face of a potential budget deficit, the cost-benefit ratio favors the City finding a way to not only continue funding Advance Peace at its current level but also replace the withdrawn DOJ funding.
Failure to increase the Advance Peace budget is really a cut to public safety. In a Feb. 20, Fresno Bee article, Fresno City Council Member Mike Karbassi said that cuts to public safety would be a “non-starter.”
Advance Peace Fresno is an investment in public safety, not an expense.
