Losing Faith? Police, Black Churches, and the Resurgence of Youth Violence in Boston

Boston received national acclaim for its innovative approach to preventing youth violence in the 1990s. The well-known Operation Ceasefire initiative was an interagency violence prevention intervention that focused enforcement and social service resources on a small number of gang-involved offenders at the heart of the city’s youth violence problem. The Ceasefire strategy was associated with a near two-thirds drop in youth homicide in the late 1990s. While the sudden decrease in youth homicide was surprising and certainly newsworthy, the Boston approach was also noted for its extraordinary police-community relationship spearheaded by the Ten Point Coalition of activist black clergy. The involvement of black ministers in the Ceasefire strategy provided a mechanism of transparency and accountability to the minority community that conferred the legitimacy