By Greg Garrison | AL.com

In 2025, AL.com’s “Beyond the Violence” project, in partnership with The Birmingham Times, examines whether Birmingham can grow beyond its crime problem and become safer, healthier and happier.

Birmingham Mayor Randall Woodfin and interim Birmingham Police Chief Michael Pickett say they have a plan to reduce violent crime in the city, which reached a record level last year.

Woodfin says 42 of 82 recent recommendations of the recent Birmingham Crime Commission report are being implemented. Pickett has his own seven-point crime reduction strategy already in effect.

The city’s crime plan has evolved since a dramatic turning point event in a turning point year. Officials are pointing to efforts to recruit officers, update state laws and corral people who turn guns against others.

But will the plan work? Is it working?

Earlier this month, the city announced Birmingham homicides are down 27 percent so far in 2025, fueled in part by a 23-day stretch with no homicides in the city.

Plans and reports may help. Or not, said a former top-ranking member of the department.

“Far too often, it’s just an attempt to kick the can down the road to do the things we all know need to be done,” said State Rep. Allen Treadaway, who joined the Birmingham Police Department in 1989 and retired as assistant chief in 2020. “We don’t need commission after commission to tell us that our staffing levels are critically low, that violent crime is out of control.”

Birmingham ended 2024 with 152 homicides, the highest number of killings in the city ever, breaking the record of 148 set in 1933. The lowlight of a violent year was the Sept. 21 mass shooting at the Hush Lounge in Birmingham’s Five Points South entertainment district that killed four and left 17 injured.

Two immediate efforts to tackle crime and increase public safety involve police staffing and recruitment.

In the aftermath of the Hush Lounge shooting, Woodfin brought a plan to the Birmingham City Council. The council, anxious for answers, embraced it. On Oct. 8, the council approved Woodfin’s $15.8 million plan for recruiting and retaining police officers.

“Boots on the ground always works,” said Birmingham Police FOP President Deangelo Hall, who supported the plan.

“If you look at the ebb and flow of crime in the city of Birmingham, it was always at its lowest when you had the highest number of law enforcement officers on the street, boots on the ground,” Treadaway said. “When the homicides were in the fifties (53 in 2014), we had about 850 officers on the force; by some estimates you have half of that now.”

The police department is funded for more than 800 positions. It has 223 vacancies for all sworn personnel, including 172 patrol officer positions, 34 officers in administrative, operations and investigative bureaus and 17 additional vacancies of sergeants, lieutenants and captains, city spokesman Rick Journey said at the time of the approval of the police recruitment and retention plan.

Woodfin announced the formation of the Birmingham Crime Commission in October, to welcome further ideas from civic leaders to address the city’s crisis of gun-related murders. The commission completed an initial report, released Jan. 6, that calls for both immediate and long-term solutions.

Woodfin and Pickett have declined interview requests to talk about specific aspects of the crime report, but the mayor promised monthly updates on how the city is implementing the report’s recommendations. On Feb. 11, he gave his first report. Woodfin said 42 of 82 recommendations the city hopes to act on are in the planning or pre-launch stage. “That’s 53 percent,” he said.

“Let’s be clear; much work has to be done, and much work remains, but this is progress over the last 30 days,” Woodfin said on Feb. 11.

Not every recommendation of the crime commission has been acted upon. The crime commission recommended naming a “Crime Czar,” but that’s not a proposal the city has followed up on. It also recommended an Office of Safety and Gun Violence prevention. No update was available on that, either.

Some of the recommendations re-emphasized tactics the city had already announced, such as police recruitment.

The commission also recommended more collaboration with probation and parole officers and Jefferson County District Attorney Danny Carr.

“Those meetings have either happened or will happen within the next 30 days or less,” Woodfin said. He has not released any details on what such collaboration would entail.

Other recommendations included:

• a plan for reserve officers;

• an emphasis on focused deterrence in hotspots for gun violence;

• expanding the University of Alabama at Birmingham’s hospital-linked anti-violence program;

• street outreach teams to target at-risk individuals to disrupt the cycle of violence;

• shooting reviews;

• an emphasis on blight removal and code enforcement;

• and the passage of public safety legislation such as a state ban on Glock switches.

“I think overall, it’s safe to say the cadence we have established to take steps and implement these recommendations are moving at break speed,” Woodfin said, “and we remain committed to not only the partnership with City Council and the police department but with Jefferson County Sheriff Mark Pettway, District Attorney Carr and our federal partners in Birmingham.”

But the crime commission report is not the only guide the city is working with.

Updating law enforcement plans

Reducing homicides won’t happen without having a plan, Pickett said.

“You can have a goal, but without having a plan, you’re likely not going to accomplish that,” he said.

Pickett outlined his own seven-point crime reduction strategy, laying out the emphasis that he’s working on within the police department.

He announced in a Feb. 10 press conference that there are plans for a joint task force on stolen cars with the Jefferson County Sheriff’s Office.

“Stolen vehicles are the tools that criminals use to commit the shootings, to commit the robberies and murders,” Pickett said. “We want to interrupt all the tools that criminals use, whether it’s illegal money, whether it’s illegal guns that are being trafficked, or stolen vehicles. Whatever tools they use, we want to interrupt those tools.”

He also announced plans to increase the number of commanders working at all four precincts during peak crime hours, and said it has already been put in effect.

But city officials say they need all the help they can get, and they need support outside of local boundaries.

City Council President Darrell O’Quinn said some aspects of crime-fighting, such as a slow-moving criminal court system that creates a backlog of cases, are beyond the city’s control.

“Those who are committing these crimes, including people accused of murder, are walking free for years while they wait to go to trial in many cases,” O’Quinn said. “That is a direct challenge for city officials to be able to provide public safety and is something our community needs to be aware of. I’d encourage everyone to reach out to their state leaders to bring this issue to their attention. We need their help. Specifically, we need additional judges to come and adjudicate these cases.”

Woodfin said the city council has been a key partner in implementing improvements. “I want to acknowledge the support and partnership of the Birmingham City Council as we take more steps to enhance public safety and attack gun violence,” he said.

Woodfin said he would continue to work with the city council on “making sure we not only chop wood but make ourselves accountable based on the recommendations made to us.”

‘Seek out the shooters’

As recently as 2014, Birmingham had as few as 53 homicides.

Woodfin was first elected in 2017, re-elected in 2021, and is seeking a third term as mayor.

There have been more than 100 homicides in seven of the last eight years, the exception being 93 in 2019.

While the crime commission said its goal is to “make Birmingham the safest city in America,” city officials would likely be happy with at least a reversal of the trend toward extremely high homicide numbers.

To get to the goal of reduced homicides, the city needs to take violent criminals with guns off the streets.

Pickett said Birmingham’s top-crime fighting units, a special enforcement team and the crime suppression unit of the tactical division, “will seek out the shooters.”

The effort will be guided by ShotSpotter data that can pinpoint automatic weapon fire, reports on hotspots from precinct commanders and crime analysts who work closely with homicide, felony assault and robbery detectives.

“It will seek out the one percent of our community that chooses to break the law,” Pickett said. “They will arrest them, and we will report out on their arrest on a regular basis.”

The city’s crime-reduction team will increase the urgency to arrest violent offenders, he said.

“They pride themselves on making arrests quickly,” Pickett said. “They make arrests so quickly at times that individuals are still in possession of the firearm they used in the crime. So, that’s the significance of a swift apprehension.”

Birmingham Police Department’s special operations bureau will work with the U.S. attorney’s office and federal agencies such as the FBI and ATF.

“There will be more federal indictments coming down the pike,” Pickett said.

A call of “shots fired” should carry extreme urgency, he said.

“If someone discharges a weapon into a home or into a car, and they’re not successful in hitting a person, we want to go ahead and arrest that person now before they take a life,” he said. “That’s our goal in law enforcement, is prevention as well.”

Those who fire gunshots toward innocent people must be stopped quickly, he said.

“We’ll be implementing a discharge team, or discharge unit,” Pickett said. “Their goal is simple. Catch the shooters before they kill.”

Whether the killers will be deterred by these added programs and points of emphasis remains the critical question for an interim police chief and a mayor facing a possibly contentious re-election campaign where crime will likely be the dominant issue.

“Just know this,” Pickett said. “BPD is locked in.”

Asked Tuesday if he has seen any evidence that the crime plan is working, Woodfin referred the question to spokesman Journey, who said year-over-year homicides are tracking at about the same rate so far. There have been 16 homicides so far this year, compared to 19 on the same date last year on the way to the city’s record number of homicides.