Kyung Jin Lee

A couple of years ago, Sonny Le and his five-year-old son were approaching their front gate in Oakland’s Glenview neighborhood after school when Le saw two men running towards them.

“One was trying to go behind us – the maneuver trying to corral your prey, basically,” he says. “The other one started coming right at me, at us. He put his hoodie on. It was like, OK, these kids gonna rob us.”

Residents in the city of Richmond are reeling from a recent shooting spree, including the murder of a 19-year-old. The city has had four homicides so far this year – all committed in public, all during the day. And there have been other daytime shootings. They’ve shocked city residents – because crimes like that are no longer the norm.

KALW’s criminal justice reporter Kyung-Jin Lee joined Holly Kernan in studio to talk about the crime drop in Richmond – and what other cities can learn from Richmond’s approach.

It may be hard to believe, but many residents of the city of Richmond now talk about rampant gun violence there as a thing of the past. Less than a decade ago, the city experienced the chaos of a violent crime wave. There were 29 murders in 2002, and that number rose to 47 in 2007 and 2009. For a city its size – just over 100,000 people – that was almost ten times the national average.