Transforming Public Safety: Guiding the CVI Frontlines

Every high-performance mission deserves the best tools and guidance. Those working on the frontlines of Community Violence Intervention (CVI) require no less.

Transforming Public Safety: Guiding the CVI Frontlines is the definitive field manual for those entrusted with one of the most critical public missions of our time — making retaliatory gun violence rare and non-recurring.

Born from the Advance Peace Zone (APZone) and refined through years of lived practice, this book offers more than instruction—it offers direction and vision. This compact yet powerful guide equips practitioners, leaders, and policymakers with the standards, principles, lessons, and daily practices that guide the world’s most trusted CVI practitioners. Together, they form a clear, practical blueprint for transforming not only how we do public safety, but how we define it.

Inside, you’ll find what high-performance CVI teams know to be true: credibility is earned, transformation requires trust, and peace is built one relationship at a time.

Whether you are new to the frontlines or leading a city’s CVI strategy, this book will help you deepen your understanding, sharpen your discipline, and elevate your impact. This is your companion in the field, your reminder of why the work matters, and your invitation to rise to the highest standard of peacemaking.

Your journey begins here.

DeVone Boggan is a nationally recognized architect of Community Violence Intervention (CVI) and the founder of Advance Peace, a pioneering nonprofit that transforms the lives of those most impacted by retaliatory gun violence. A 2021 Ashoka Fellow and visiting scholar at UC Berkeley, Boggan built Richmond, California’s ground breaking Office of Neighborhood Safety, the first of its kind in the nation. His work helped turn one of America’s most violent cities into a model for peace—and sparked a movement reimagining how public safety is built, led, and sustained.