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Operation Cease Fire

Operation Cease Fire The cutting edge of the Boston Strategy is Operation Cease Fire, an innovative collaboration that focuses targeted interventions on those most likely to become the offenders and victims in firearm violence.

Operation Cease Fire is a multi-jurisdictional effort designed to quickly suppress flare-ups of firearm violence in gang "hot spots," to prioritize prosecutions and to disrupt the trafficking in firearms to youth gangs.

This collaboration features the US Attorney’s office; BATF; Boston Police Department; the Suffolk County District Attorney’s office; Probation; Parole; the Department of Youth Services (DYS); the US Drug Enforcement Administration; the Massachusetts State Police; Boston Streetworkers; the Ten Point Coalition; Boston Public Schools Safety Services; The Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University; and other local public safety agencies and community leaders. To achieve its overall goal of reducing and preventing firearm violence, Cease Fire pursues three interrelated basic objectives.

First, led by the Boston Police Department's Youth Violence Strike Force, the collaborative uses order maintenance tactics to quickly "cool" any area of the city in which gang firearm violence flares. The police and others respond quickly, based on incidents and shared intelligence. They meet with community members to review the tactics to be deployed and, most significantly, they meet with the gang members to lay out in concrete terms the intensive police attention they will experience unless the violence stops. Once the violence ceases, maintenance of the peace is ensured by the district beat team officers who work in the area.

Secondly, the most dangerous offenders are targeted for priority prosecutions, with the US Attorney’s Office and the District Attorney deciding jointly on which offenders to prosecute in the federal system. Several successful federal prosecutions of pivotal gun trafficking and career criminal offenders have resulted.

Equally important, the collaborative works to disrupt the flow of arms to the gangs. In developing the strategy, the BPD's Youth Violence Strike Force collaborated with Harvard’s Kennedy School, who, under NIJ sponsorship, conducted extensive research on the offenders and victims in youth homicides and on the flow of firearms, utilizing pioneering trace work done since 1991 by BATF and the BPD. This knowledge formed the foundation for the strategy.

Operation Cease Fire has received the following awards:
  • Winner – 1999 Webber Seavey Award, International Association of Chiefs of Police
  • Winner – 1998 Herman Goldstein Award for Excellence in Problem-Oriented Policing
  • Winner – 1997 State and Local Government Award, Innovations in American Government – A partnership among the Ford Foundation, John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University, and the Council for Excellence in Government
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