Boston received national acclaim for its innovative approach to preventing youth violence in the 1990s. 1 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. 2 The Ceasefire strategy was associated with a near two-thirds drop in youth homicide in the late 1990s. 3 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. 4 The involvement of black ministers in the Ceasefire strategy provided a mechanism of transparency and accountability to the minority community that conferred the legitimacy