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“We’re here to save lives.” - Cornelius Bowser, pastor at Charity Apostolic Church and the City of San Diego’s commissioner on gang prevention and intervention
By Armando Rasing II
Photo, left, by Armando Rasing II: Bishop Cornelius Bowser leading a service at Charity Apostolic Church
December 17, 2025 (Southeast San Diego) - On a Friday night in early December, dozens of people attended a church service in Southeast San Diego - praying, giving thanks and singing for over three hours.
But this wasn’t any regular church service. They were expressing their faith and gratitude that the area, once plagued by gang violence, was finally beginning to turn around.
Bishop Cornelius Bowser, who is a pastor and the City of San Diego’s commissioner on gang prevention and intervention, led the service and said that the Southeast San Diego that exists today is far different from the one he grew up in.
“In the ‘70s and going to the early ‘80s, when I was out there,” he recalled that there were not a lot of resources available. Because of that, he said there was “ a lot more violence versus today.”
On top of his work as commissioner, he is also in charge of several programs that aim to reduce gun violence.
While crime in San Diego has decreased since Bowser’s youth, and San Diego is statistically one of the safest major cities in the United States, crime has been historically disproportionate in the Southeastern area. Southeast San Diego has a large population of people of color, specifically African Americans, Latinos and Filipinos. The area has struggled with a history of violent crimes, primarily from gang activity, for several decades. In 1990, 100 of San Diego’s 135 homicides came from the Southeast area.
But things have recently begun to change.
Nonfatal shootings in the San Diego Police Department’s Southeastern division have decreased from 88 in 2021, to below 15 in 2025. The police department declined to reveal the number of fatal shootings that have happened in that same time period.
Firearm-related emergency department admissions have also declined in several Southeast San Diego communities over the last few years. For example, the Logan Heights community had 25 in 2021, and it decreased to seven in 2025.
Southeast San Diego was proclaimed as one of the safest areas in San Diego last June. Some community activists attribute the decline in gun violence to the local community organizations.
One San Diego-based group that has been actively involved in trying to reduce the gun violence within the area is the nonpartisan group San Diegans for Gun Violence Prevention.
“Some of the things that we’ve been talking about [include] educating people on how to stay safe, knocking out firearms,” said Carol Landale, the vice president of the gun violence prevention group. “Just basically keeping guns out of the arms of the wrong people, including children that might just have a nonintentional shooting and removing the stigma of needing to ask for help if you’re struggling with some kind of issue and violence.”
Photo, right by Armando Rasing II: Carol Landale with Bishop Cornelius Bowser
On top of informing locals on addressing gun violence throughout the country, the group works with city leaders and other community organizations committed to nonviolence.
“I think in any community that has been proven to reduce violence, there are community-based organizations working with youth in the community,” said Sandy Housley, the secretary of the gun violence prevention group.
Before the recent decrease in gun violence, nonfatal shootings throughout Southeast San Diego increased during the COVID-19 pandemic, with over 150 nonfatal shootings total happening in 2020 and 2021 within the area. As a result, then-District 4 councilmember and now county supervisor Monica Montgomery Steppe contacted Bowser about starting a violence reduction program in early 2020.
“When the community and when city officials in law enforcement [are] not in sync and working together, that causes a rise in violence,” Bowser said. “And a lot of times each group thinks they can do it on their own and bring down violence on their own. The police - a lot of the times they want to take credit. But it’s a joint effort.”
Bowser created the Seasons of Peace program that same year after being contacted by Steppe.
The Seasons of Peace is a yearly program that holds community events in neighborhoods that are affected by crime and calls for a ceasefire between rival gang members during a certain period of time to build community relations and honor victims of violence. This year’s program began on Nov. 22 and ends on Jan. 1.
“It’s about engaging the whole community with activities and events, but also reaching that small percentage that we know is committing violence to get them to fall back during this time,” Bowser said.
The program also includes one-on-one mentorship with gang members to provide them with the opportunity and resources to escape the gang lifestyle.
“It might be anger management, or violence prevention or violence intervention, self-control, responsible thinking, peer relations, substance - we have [a] curriculum that can focus on any type of behavior,” Bowser said, in reference to the resources that may be provided to help at-risk individuals.
“And we work with those individuals through that curriculum to get them to see [their problems] themselves because it’s not my job to tell you what you need to do to change,” he added. “It’s my job to facilitate, to help you change by recognizing what your problems are so you can change.”
In 2021, the No Shots Fired program, a collaboration between the San Diego Police Department and the City of San Diego’s commission on gang prevention and intervention, was effectively launched following pressure from citizens to increase public safety.
The No Shots Fired program directly attempts to “detect and interrupt planned violent activity” and also provide resources to escape the gang lifestyle, similarly to the Seasons of Peace program. The purpose of the program is to ensure that peace within the city is maintained year-round.
Bowser says that there is a distinction between violence interruption and violence intervention and that the No Shots Fired program aims to interrupt violence.
“If I’m working with these individuals that’s involved with gun violence, I’m doing violence intervention,” Bowser said. “But if there’s a shooting, and I’m trying to disrupt that shooting so that there’s no retaliation, that’s violence interruption.”
Within the last four years, the program has reported almost 100 services in response to shootings, over 600 outreach activities and group sessions, over 300 gang interruptions/disruptions and one peace agreement between rival gangs.
The San Diego Police Department has recently held several community events within the last year to help build trust between citizens and law enforcement. Bowser said that while police officers should continue to hold these events, the strongest way to build trust is in fair treatment and transparency towards all people in daily interactions and procedural justice.
He added that while he understands the public’s lack of trust in police officers and the judicial system, the community needs the help of police officers.
“The way I look at it is - desperate times call for desperate measures,” Bowser said. “And whatever we [have] to do to try to save lives, let’s do that. We’re not here to destroy lives. We’re here to save lives.”
From the streets to salvation
Bowser, born and raised in Southeast San Diego, did not always have the outlook on gun violence that he has now.
“There [was] nobody out there to really counsel us, nobody to offer any type of support services to us versus now,” Bowser said. “I mean, the community [now] is saturated with trauma-informed care, saturated with clinicians, counselors and youth programs.”
He was a former Crips gang member until he was 21 years old.
“The young people I work with today that are involved with gun violence and the gangs and things like that, thank God they’re not, but they’re not out there committing violence like we were,” Bowser said. “When I used to gang bang, it was every day. That was part of our job and part of our existence [was] to get out and get into something.”
By the time Bowser was 19 years old, he had grown tired of the gang lifestyle and felt remorse for the crimes that he had been committing. Despite his hopes of a better life, he found himself drawn back to the same old routines repeatedly.
In 1984, he found his friend dead in the middle of the street. While it was not the first time a friend of his had died from gun violence, this time was different. He wanted to retaliate for his friend, but his friends wanted to do drugs instead.
“And I thought to myself, that’s what they’d do if I’m dead,” Bowser said.
So on Dec. 5 of that same year, following a brief jail stint, he decided to commit himself to Christianity and permanently escape the gang life.
Four decades later, Bowser was given the “A Key to the Movement” award by Shane Harris from the People’s Association of Justice Advocates last June in celebration of his work to reduce gun violence. Housley and Landale credited the decrease in gun violence in Southeast San Diego to Bowser’s activist work within the community.
“It’s a collaborative effort,” Bowser said. “And so I don’t stick my chest out like I did this, I know it’s all of us that did [this]. It’s a community [that came] together that did this.”
What’s next for the Southeast?
Housley and Landale said that kids in the Southeast need better educational and economic opportunities to accomplish equality in San Diego.
Bowser said that while it should be celebrated that violence is down, the issues that cause the violence have not been addressed yet. He added that those who have experienced trauma and poverty need assistance through wrap-around treatment.
“Now we bring these individuals in, we do an assessment,” Bowser said. “Why is this guy shooting people? What’s going on in his life, right? It might be that he lacks a mentor. He lacked a father, or it might be that he [has] a lot of trauma in his life.”
He believes that violence is an effect of unresolved trauma, poverty and a lack of job opportunities.
“We need more resources,” Bowser added. “We need more support.”
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