Sacramento is weighing whether to strip its Office of Violence Prevention from Sacramento Police Department oversight, following revelations that the city's two largest violence-prevention grantees received millions of dollars with little or sometimes no oversight from the city or police. The debate comes as council members and residents alike are demanding accountability after reporting exposed a pattern of unfiled tax returns and lopsided access to free tickets at the city-owned Golden 1 Center suite.
The push to reconsider OVP's home within city government follows an investigation by the Sacramento Bee, whose reporting found that the office's two largest grant recipients, Impact Sac and Brother 2 Brother, had failed to file required tax returns, which under state law made both organizations legally prohibited from soliciting charitable donations at the time. City Councilmembers Mai Vang and Lisa Kaplan have both suggested reassessing oversight of the youth violence prevention program, with Kaplan saying it is time for OVP to find a different organizational home. The office manages Sacramento's efforts to prevent gun violence among teens and young adults and was placed under the police department in 2022.
City records show Impact Sac has received $1.26 million in city contracts since 2020, while Brother 2 Brother and its affiliated organization Girls Leading Our World received $2.5 million between 2020 and 2025, according to a summary of the Bee's findings. The city paid both organizations despite their tax-filing lapses, the Bee reported. Under Title 11 Section 312 of the California Code of Regulations and State Government Code Section 12599, charitable groups listed as delinquent on the state Attorney General's Registry of Charities and Fundraisers are barred from operating or soliciting donations in California.
Free Tickets, Full Suite
Beyond the tax filings, the Bee's reporting also detailed how Impact Sac collected 783 suite tickets to Golden 1 Center between 2018 and 2026 — nearly 300 more than any other organization — while receiving over $1.2 million in Sacramento Police Department contracts, according to an analysis by the Markkula Center for Applied Ethics. Among those tickets, Impact Sac used Sactown Youth Night funding to buy 25 additional Chris Brown concert tickets at full price, on top of 25 tickets it had already received for the same show.
Nicole Dye, connected to Impact Sac, defended the arrangement, saying people could apply, check the suite box and fill the suite — and stated she would not apologize for using the organization's suite access. Nicole Clavo, who oversees OVP, said she used some tickets obtained by Impact Sac herself. Clavo has defended the office against claims that grantees were not appropriately vetted or monitored, saying grant oversight notably improved since OVP was placed under the police department and that being housed there allowed her to build accountability practices. She also said she has a very high degree of confidence that grantees complied with their contractual grant terms.
Nonprofit Leaders Respond
Mervin Brookins, who directs Brother 2 Brother, acknowledged the organization's past poor accounting practices, saying the group was good at its work but not its paperwork. Brookins said Brother 2 Brother has retained people to help correct its accounting practices and promised he was committed to getting the organization's books right, assuring that the council's trust and faith in Brother 2 Brother is taken seriously. Both Impact Sac and Brother 2 Brother are described in the Bee's reporting as violence-prevention nonprofits that conduct frontline youth mentoring and outreach in high-risk Sacramento neighborhoods.
City Council members have acknowledged the need to regain public trust amid the allegations of poor oversight, and residents have called for the city to audit OVP outright. Councilmember Kevin McCarty said changing which department oversees the program could shift the community's view and trust without necessarily changing how services are delivered on the ground, and added that the city should evaluate oversight of its violence prevention programs more broadly. City spokesperson Julie Hall confirmed that a consultant evaluating OVP will assess where the office fits on Sacramento's organizational chart.
A History of Shifting Oversight
OVP's current structure traces back to a 2021 restructuring under former City Manager Howard Chan, which established the grant framework that selected Impact Sac and Brother 2 Brother before the office moved under police department oversight the following year, according to a summary of Bee reporting shared on Reddit. That represented a departure from Sacramento's original model: the city first adopted its targeted gun violence reduction strategy in 2017 by contracting with national group Advance Peace under former task force director Khaalid Muttaqi, operating entirely outside police command, according to CapRadio. Advance Peace relied on formerly incarcerated “credible messengers” to mentor those at highest risk of gun violence between 2017 and 2020.
A 2022 study published in Urban Science found Sacramento's 2018–2019 Peacemaker Fellowship program, run outside law enforcement, produced significant gun homicide reductions in targeted neighborhoods and saved an estimated $18 to $41 in public costs per dollar spent, based on UC Berkeley researchers' analysis of geolocated shooting data. Local violence prevention activists have said the current relationship with law enforcement could undermine efforts to reach at-risk teens who distrust police, a concern that echoes back to that earlier independent model.
Police leadership, meanwhile, points to results under the current structure: Sacramento Police Department data indicated citywide homicides dropped 22% between 2022 and early 2026, with department leaders crediting community violence intervention partnerships alongside targeted policing strategies, according to CBS Sacramento. That progress came even as Sacramento police proposed a $1.4 million reduction to Gang Prevention & Intervention Taskforce project funds this spring amid a $66.2 million citywide budget deficit, a cut that drew pushback from community intervention workers, per ABC10.
What Comes Next
The city manager's office has stated that executive leadership is actively meeting with councilmembers to develop a new, comprehensive Community Violence Prevention Strategy, according to CapRadio. That planning comes just months after Sacramento secured a $5 million CalVIP state grant in March to scale up OVP's 24-hour rapid incident response, street outreach, and youth case management across Del Paso Heights, Oak Park, and Meadowview–Valley Hi, as Hoodline previously reported.
The Sacramento Bee's investigation found broader oversight issues within OVP and the nonprofits it funds through grants, adding pressure to decisions the city has yet to finalize about where the office should sit organizationally and how closely its grantees should be watched going forward. Whether that means returning to an independent, non-police model or building new accountability measures within the current structure remains an open question the city's consultant and council are still working through.
