SACRAMENTO, Calif. — It has been just over two weeks now since the deadly K Street shooting in downtown Sacramento that killed six people and wounded a dozen more.
New court documents show three of the six people killed had gang ties. According to the Sacramento County District Attorney’s Office, they were identified as Joshua Hoye-Lucchesi, Devazia Turner and Sergio Harris.
That's in addition to arrested suspects who have gang ties.
Typically, local violence prevention advocates say, they’d see retaliation from a gang-related incident happen within 24 to 48 hours or a week at most. In this case, those advocates and Sacramento Police Department say they’ve seen no cases of retaliation, despite police calling the shooting gang-related.
Mervin Brookins, CEO of the Del Paso Heights-based program Brother 2 Brother, credits boots-on-the-ground intervention work.
“A lot of organizations have been successful at reaching some of the members of the gangs that were involved and getting cooler heads to prevail, so there hasn’t been any retaliation – and hopefully that continues,” Brookins told ABC10.
Brother 2 Brother works to reduce gang activity by mentoring teens and young men in gangs or at risk of joining gangs. Brookins said, to his knowledge, none of the three K Street shooting suspects with gang ties were involved in one of Sacramento’s community-based organizations.
“I don’t think there was anything missed. I think this particular group of individuals just hadn’t been reached,” Brookins said. “I really believe that had we had just one of those guys in our program, that we could’ve made a difference—and here’s why: one of the main things we teach these young men is how to say 'no' to their own friends.”
He said many of these young men involved in gangs “grow up thinking that in order to be a good friend and solid person, they got to ride with them, they got to go along with whatever is happening at the moment. That’s not always true. Sometimes, being a good friend is being able to pull your friend back from the edge, and I believe if we had been able to reach just one of those individuals that could’ve stood up in that moment and said, ‘Wait a minute, this is crazy, I’m not going,’ then I think we’d have the potential to stop that whole thing.”
Brookins says the K Street shooting caught violence prevention advocates off guard.
“This is the first time that I remember where the shooting was just so reckless, and it involved so many people that had nothing to do with the issue,” he said. “I think that aspect of it shocked the city and made us all, you know, wake up and say, ‘Hey, we need to do a lot more,’ because somewhere along the line we missed this group of individuals and we missed the potential for this to happen.”
REDUCING RECIDIVISM
There is a variety of reasons why someone would commit a violent crime, Brookins said, but one of them is income equality. According to the United Ways of California, “nearly one in three California households—over 3.5 million families (33%)—do not earn sufficient income to meet basic needs.”
Brookins explained the mentality like this:
“If I don’t have a job to sustain myself and sustain my family, I’m going to go back to the only thing I know. If the only thing I know is the criminal lifestyle, then that’s what I’m going to do to try to take care of myself,” he said. “When you’re thinking about lowering recidivism, it’s jobs. That’s the number one factor. When people have livable wages, they would much rather work those livable wages than going back to being incarcerated.”
One of the suspects in the K Street incident got out of prison early, back in February, due to credits afforded to him through programs like those enabled by Prop 57. Brookins said he doesn’t want one high-visibility instance of an early-released person being accused of a violent crime to derail the bigger conversation.
“You can’t simplify the early release program to a simple incident. It’s much broader than that,” Brookins said. “Early release has its pros and it has its drawbacks, obviously, because things like this have the potential to happen. But what about the other 99 guys that got out and this never happened? The other 99 guys that got out that have turned their lives around and are helping other people turn their lives around? So, let’s not weaponize tragedy.”
Opponents of early release programs, like state Sen. Jim Nielsen (R-Red Bluff), disagree.
"For the most part, they are not rehabilitated,” he said of people eligible for – and getting – early release.
Nielsen served as chair of the California Board of Parole Hearings for nine years and is adamantly opposed to early release opportunities like Prop 57.
LOOKING AHEAD
Looking ahead to the summer, when - statistically - the crime rate goes up, Brookins said he is connecting with a handful of other organizations like his from around the community to form the Safe Sacramento Coalition. They’ll do gang intervention work that spans multiple neighborhoods.
“There’s many different reasons why young men join gangs. Some, they join for loyalty. Some, they feel that it’s the only family they know. Some, it’s protection. Some, it may be financial gain,” Brookins said. “There are a variety of reasons, so you got to have a variety of approaches to help pull these young men back.”
He said he is not the only community advocate talking about gang intervention strategies in the wake of the K Street shooting.
“The question is always asked, ‘What could have been done?’ And the response has always been, ‘We need resources. We need more money,’” Brookins said. “That shouldn’t be looked at as a money-grab, but the truth of it is—unless you have the resources to help these young men, you just simply can’t reach them all.”
He’d like to see the city of Sacramento make a long-term commitment to fund these community-based organizations (CBOs) that are making a positive difference through boots-on-the-ground, relationship-building work. Advocates point to the fruit of those efforts pre-pandemic, when Sacramento saw zero youth homicides in both 2018 and 2019.
“The mayor and the city council members, they have done a tremendous job in investing in this type of work, but right now, we need them to meet the moment, and we need them to commit to long-term work by the CBOs,” Brookins said. “They need to invest in community-lead public safety, which is what we all do.”
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