There were two gun-related homicides in Gresham in January 2025. That’s two too many, says Gresham Police Chief Travis Gullberg. Gullberg is one of the people involved in the city’s new Ceasefire initiative, which brings together community-based organizations, city leadership, law enforcement and public health experts to reduce gun violence through focused outreach. Gullberg joins us, along with Marcell Frazier, violence prevention and community partnerships coordinator for the City of Gresham, to explain how the program will work.
Note: The following transcript was transcribed digitally and validated for accuracy, readability and formatting by an OPB volunteer.
Dave Miller: From the Gert Boyle Studio at OPB, this is Think Out Loud. I’m Dave Miller. There were two gun-related homicides in Gresham in January. Gresham Police Chief Travis Gullberg says that’s two too many. Gullberg is one of the people involved in the city’s new Ceasefire initiative, which brings together community-based organizations, city leaders, law enforcement and public health experts to reduce gun violence. Gullberg joins us now, along with Marcell Frazier, who is the city’s violence prevention and community partnerships coordinator. Welcome to you both.
Travis Gullberg: Well, thank you for having us.
Miller: Travis Gullberg, first – I mentioned those two homicides in January. Can you give us a sense for the bigger picture right now, the major trends in gun violence in Gresham?
Gullberg: Yeah, really we got to step back about two or three years and take a look at what’s happening, really not just in our community, but multiple communities throughout the country, specifically around guns and guns used in shootings or homicides. We saw a significant increase post-COVID. I think we can all attest to the impacts that COVID had on our society in general. And for a number of reasons, coming out of COVID, we just saw an increase in violence when guns are being used. Specifically, even in our smaller community – now mind you, we’re the fourth largest city in Oregon – we saw a rise in shootings, verifiable shootings. And generally, a verifiable shooting is one in which we either have a shell casing from, or a vehicle, or maybe an apartment complex or a house has been hit, or it results in some kind of injury.
Miller: As opposed to someone saying, “I think I heard a gunshot”?
Gullberg: Yeah, and that often happens, but we also saw a trend where people weren’t calling in because, whether they got desensitized to it or weren’t sure if it was a car backfiring, like you said, or fireworks or something like that. But actual verifiable shootings were increasing. And I think everybody can attest that we’re seeing that, we’re concerned about that. So that really opened the door for us to have a conversation at the city leadership level with our electeds, to say we need to be doing something within our community. Because, as you said, one or two is too many. And for our size of community, we had a particularly high year in 2022 where we doubled, maybe even tripled our homicides, and a significant number of those [were] related to gun violence. We need to do something about it, to protect our community.
Miller: Homicides are down a little bit from then though. Does that track overall with gun violence? Has there been a reduction since the post-pandemic high?
Gullberg: Yeah, there has, but what remains concerning is the overall use of the guns. So while maybe homicides are down, the use in, again, either threatening another, or some other type of violence, or a fear factor for our communities is still there.
Miller: Marcell Frazier, we had you on last year to talk about Project Ceasefire in Portland. You’re now doing the same program in Gresham. Can you just remind us how Project Ceasefire works?
Marcell Frazier: Yes. Project Ceasefire is centered on a weekly or biweekly shooting review. We go over every single shooting in the community. We identify those folks who are up for services. We communicate with the DA’s office, the probation office, adult and juvenile probation and parole, as well as Portland PD and most importantly, Gresham PD. So we get a list of all the violent events that happened. And we make sure we give those folks community service, via community-based organizations. Some folks will be behavioral health therapy services, some folks will be pro-social activities, wrap around services, but the bulk will be what we call intensive case management, which is this life coaching and this everyday contact for the first 90 days. It continues for up to 18 months of just intense contact with individuals.
Miller: How do you decide who should get that intense contact?
Frazier: So there’s a list of five to eight risk factors. It’s administered by the National Institute of Criminal Justice Reform. In Portland, the risk factors include males between the age of 18 and 44, previously incarcerated, maybe they have a brother or a friend who’s been shot, or maybe they’re just showing up to a lot of shooting events, but they’ve never yet been shot or shot somebody. There’s a set list. We’re getting our problem analysis for gun violence completed by the National Institute of Criminal Justice reform here by May. That’ll go over the previous two years of all of our shootings and it’ll come up with our own specific set of risk factors, is what we call it. So it might skew younger in East County, it might skew older, it might skew people who have more police contact, it might skew people who have more previous jail contacts. So that is administered by our consultant.
Miller: Tell me if this is an accurate example or hypothetical, that there’s somebody whose best friend was involved in a shooting, maybe was a shooter, or was killed or injured, and that they’ve had some run-ins with police in the past. Their name is flagged, and then you and others around this big table once a week say, “OK, what about this person? Let’s talk about this person.”
Frazier: Yes, absolutely. That’s a great example. And then once we kind of talk about that person, whether it’s probation [or] parole, we say, what’s their prior involvement? Are they a good candidate for Ceasefire? Then, what service would be the good fit? There’s multiple community-based orgs – I think in the city of Gresham we contract 20 and three of them specifically do intensive case management. So we go around the table and say, hey, is this person good for this org? And then we’ll kind of disseminate that information, give all the identifying details to that community-based org and then they can go make their contact. Then police …
Miller: They, as opposed to a police officer?
Frazier: Exactly.
Miller: So, what’s an example of one of these community-based organizations?
Gullberg: Well, can I kind of step back with the questions that Marcell was answering? The important part of this is interrupting the cycle of violence. And that was a great question. The idea here is that’s what wasn’t happening before. Police were going out and doing enforcement action, but we truly weren’t getting to the root causes of what is causing the violence and future preventing it. So we’re now working towards getting individuals connected to services that hopefully never become a shooter, or hopefully never have to experience violence, but we weren’t sharing that information now.
So that description you said of getting around the table and sharing information, largely in the past, that was just law enforcement. Now, we have all of our community-based organizations partnering with us, as well as all our other system partners around public safety, so that we’re truly trying to get to individuals before they ever commit crimes or are a victim of a crime.
An example of a community-based organization could be, maybe culturally-specific, or as Marcell said, as we know our data, it could be youth-oriented or adult-oriented. But it’s those that provide follow up and an opportunity to connect with them to provide mentorship, leadership development, getting them hooked up to services, put them on a path towards higher education, a job or maybe military service, whatever it may be. But it’s the idea that you’re getting into their lives early. And hopefully before they get involved in the criminal justice system, you get them connected to those pathways that provide a positive outcome.
Miller: It seems like this system is only going to work if your intelligence is good. I mean, if what you’re talking about is more of a social web view of the world, of who’s been affected by, what are their life experiences, who are their friends – I mean, you have to know that. How do you?
Frazier: I think with the people at the table, right? So, for example, at our shooting review today we have probation, we have parole, we have Portland Ceasefire, we have Portland 15, we have Portland ECST. We had Gresham PD, Gresham Homicide, pretty much everyone at the table who statistically should know what these folks are going through. We go through a regional meeting every Monday with the school districts. We communicate with the school districts, sometimes on a weekly basis.
I think the right people are at the table, which I can’t speak on historically who was at the table. But since I’ve been in this line of work in Portland and in Gresham, the right folks are at the table to have the institutional knowledge. And then there’s now dozens of contracted community providers who also have what we call street information, street knowledge, more community knowledge. So you have the institutional knowledge, the law enforcement knowledge, and now the street intel, the street knowledge and the street and community connections.
Miller: How do you prevent this from turning into a fancy new version of profiling?
Gullberg: That’s a great question. I think what’s important here is because we have a commitment to all those partnerships on building relationships and trust. You’re right, and the old way in which we did it, by the way, was very broad and not specific.
Miller: You’ve got baggy pants, you’ve got dark skin, we think you might be in a gang. Let’s pull you over and see if we can find something on you.
Gullberg: Perfect example. And instead, now what we do is we work with those community partners to specifically identify those that are at risk. As Marcell talked earlier, we got to build that risk factor system. But our connections and our relationships is where our community-based organizations turn to us and say, “hey, this individual is at risk, we need your help.” And we need to work together on it.
Miller: Chief Gullberg, how is what you’re talking about now, the new Project Ceasefire that you’re taking part in as a city, different from what you’ve been doing before, the East Multnomah Outreach Prevention Intervention (EMOPI)?
Gullberg: Well, I think Marcell could probably talk better about the difference between the two. But what I will tell you about the Ceasefire program in particular for us, is it really helps us to better strategize and focus our work, and be open to the opportunities we have to to connect people. I spoke at our council meeting last week and they asked me that same question. The idea is, I feel like you’re flying blind if you don’t have this information. And what the Ceasefire modeling does, it provides a road map, as you will, to success around how to reduce the violence and connect people to services, while not doing the things we did in the past.
So I would say Ceasefire is specifically going about reducing gun violence. And it really just builds upon the work that EMOPI and our youth services programs were doing to specifically address gun violence. But EMOPI is so much more than that, because we want to provide opportunity for everyone in our community. We want our whole community thriving. Marcell, maybe can speak about this. It feels like we’re just building layers on top of layers.
Frazier: Yeah, no, he brings up a great point. So Ceasefire is more focused on the highest risk individuals, and folks who are actually pulling the trigger and getting shot, unfortunately. So people who are going to the hospital, people who are showing up in police reports. Whereas, EMOPI is centered on prosocial activities and wrap-around services. Usually folks engaging in prosocial activities – like basketball, football, track and field, rental assistance – aren’t necessarily shooters.
So there’s multiple streams of information. EMOPI gets many of these streams of information from the school systems, from community-based organizations, from apartment complex managers. Whereas, Ceasefire is really going to be law enforcement. It’s gonna be the DA, the police, the GPD, PPB, probation and parole, where we’re really trying to intervene, provide an intervention for the folks who we think potentially are going to be victimized by gun violence or perpetrators of gun violence.
Miller: How big … What’s your ballpark figure for the number of people in that category? The number of people who you’re likely to talk about around that table over the course of a year, say?
Frazier: So according to our consultants, a city’s population is less than 1% of what they consider highest risk. So what they consider shooters or victims of shooters are less than 1% of the total population. Gresham’s population is 116,000. I’m not great at math. I got a master’s in education, but whatever 1% of 116,000 is, and probably less than that. So a very, very finite group of individuals who are victims of shootings or shooters themselves.
Miller: My math isn’t great, but something like 1000 people. That’s still actually a lot of people.
Gullberg: I think what’s important to point out here is … two things for me. One, of course, we share a border with Portland. So when you talk about that metro area, you’re not just talking about 116,000. And I think the other part of this is, yeah, I think that number could be even smaller of the actual shooters or that are going to be victims of shooters. But there’s a whole generation of people that are surrounding these activities. That’s where we want to make our biggest impact and say, don’t even start down this road. How can we help you and provide the best pathways to success, whether that’s through education, through servicing, through opportunities with our … And we got a really robust youth services program in Gresham that we’re quite proud of, providing activities so that they don’t get involved in the bad behavior.
Miller: I’m glad you mentioned that because that’s where I want to go in the time we have left, because even if the basic idea of Project Ceasefire is to be more proactive in gun violence prevention, there does seem to be something that is reactive about it. When you all meet and you say, OK, there was this shooting, who showed up at the funeral or who … there was a shooting that happened and that’s sort of at the center of those conversations.
Marcell, first – what do you see as the most important policies that could come down at any level – the county, city – that make it more likely that people are not going to get involved in violence to begin with?
Frazier: I think I have a simple answer and that’s funding.
Miller: Funding for what? Because money is just money in someone’s hands.
Frazier: Funding for community-based orgs, who get to the root causes of violence.
Miller: Which are what?
Frazier: Which are whatever your research says. I think every city has different root causes – maybe drug use, maybe housing, maybe lack of economic opportunity. I haven’t seen the statistics in Gresham or Portland for root causes, and I think whoever figures it out probably gets paid a lot of money.
Gullberg: I often talk about being king for the day. If I was king for the day, I truly believe in education, and that’s where it all starts. I would like to see a world where we don’t have to put as much money into public safety. I mean, obviously, I’m in public safety. I care very deeply about our police officers. But if we could find a way in which we can fund, better fund and focus on education … because to me, education is a pathway to success for everybody. It equals the playing field, right?
Miller: So you’re a chief of police saying in an ideal world there would be more teachers and fewer police officers?
Gullberg: Yes. And you know and I know, we both know, unfortunately we don’t live in an ideal world. But I think that focus on [what] Marcell talks about on funding, needs to be on housing, it needs to be on education, it needs to be on access to medical needs. All that is important, but we’ll continue to have these debates and these issues probably forever, and it’s unfortunate. But I think what Ceasefire does for us, it provides an opportunity for us to say, OK, we have this issue in our community. It is our responsibility to keep our community safe. We have to be doing something. And it’s a unique opportunity in which it allows us to focus, strategize and have partners at the table, and really reach into those community-based organizations to start trying to solve these root causes … knowing that what we know, which is unfortunately, it’s not an ideal world right now.
Miller: Marcell Frazier and Travis Gullberg, thank you very much.
Frazier: Thanks.
Gullberg: Thank you.
Miller: Travis Gullberg is the chief of police for the Gresham Police Department. Marcell Frazier is the city of Gresham’s violence prevention and community partnerships coordinator.
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