A mass shooting Saturday that left four dead in Birmingham’s historic Five Points South entertainment district prompted one Jefferson County legislator to say that Birmingham is unsafe, that its police department is dangerously understaffed and that the National Guard may have to be called in to help.
While Birmingham Mayor Randall Woodfin called for more gun control legislation and a return to requiring permits for handguns, State Rep. Juandalynn Givan said no amount of laws will fix the problem.
“Birmingham has a problem, that even if you pass 15 pieces of legislation with gun violence, or any type of gun bills, the problem is you do not have the manpower to enforce the laws,” Givan said. “There are already laws on the books.”
While in the past the city has employed about 800 police officers, that’s now down around 400, she said.
“The issue that is going on in the city of Birmingham is that you have criminals who now see that the Birmingham Police Department is understaffed, undermanned,” she said.
“They just don’t have the manpower. We moved four years ago from 800 officers to now minus 400 officers. It’s numerically impossible to believe that in many of these cases now that we’re seeing that law enforcement will be able to catch these criminals.”
The criminals gunning down innocent civilians in Birmingham do not obey gun laws, or any other laws, she said.
“‘Let’s pass gun laws,’ yeah, it’s universal, everyone around the world talks about it,” said Givan, a long-time proponent of passing stricter gun laws.
“These thugs, these punks, these criminals, these killers, are not going into the store buying guns. They’re buying them off the black market. They’re buying pump stocks off the black market. Nobody’s going after the seller. You’ve got to get to the distributor, but beyond that, the problem will still remain that the city of Birmingham, law enforcement, police department, can not take much more in its current state.”
Birmingham’s police chief has long talked about the difficulty in recruiting and keeping police officers, but city leadership needs to make sure that police are at full staff and police have the resources they need to patrol and prevent crime, she said.
“The folks that are leaving in record number, that cannot take the current administration, they feel that they are devalued, that they are underpaid, they are disrespected,” Givan said. “The morale of the Birmingham Police Department is going down so low. There’s a lack of confidence in leadership.”
Finally getting the police department back to full staffing must be a priority, she said.
“How do you get at least 100 police officers in the next six months to a year?” she said. “You cannot go on like this. It’s very frustrating.”
Short-staffing of the police department has dragged on too long, Givan said.
“You got to fix the police department,” she said. “Your officers are leaving at rapid rates of speed. You cannot retain, nor can you bring back any officers right now. You’ve sent all of the wisdom and the knowledge out the door. You have officers leaving to take $20,000-$30,000 pay cuts to get away from the city of Birmingham. That’s a problem.”
That manpower need supersedes the need for new gun laws, she said.
“We can pass whatever law you’ve got on the books,” Givan said. “You’re going to still have a problem where you have communities where you go hours in a day and they see no law enforcement. Stop deflecting the realization, the truth of the matter of where we are. We have a hole that needs to be plugged. Stop putting it on the Legislature.”
The criminals are already ignoring the laws that are on the books, and getting away with it, she said.
“They’re not going to obey (a new gun law) because of one thing: they know that the likelihood of them being caught now is very unlikely,” she said. “The city of Birmingham don’t have the manpower. They just don’t. That’s what you’re seeing. That’s why they are blatantly doing what they’re doing.”
As an attorney who has defended criminals, she knows their perspective, along with the perspective of citizens who don’t feel safe leaving their homes, she said.
“I represent criminals,” she said. “I talk to these folks out here on the street.”
Givan said she’s serious about the need for National Guard assistance.
“If anything catastrophic happens, if something major, catastrophic happens, that will require massive attention from Birmingham Police Department, we will have no choice,” she said.
“If we need the National Guard to come in here, I do want the governor just to be on standby. If something happens in Birmingham, if we get to the point where we cannot handle this crime, we will need some backup. That’s just a realization of where we are.”
Where the city stands now is in a dangerous place, she said.
“We’ve got bodies dropping,” Givan said. “We have innocent people being shot up at clubs, now even on the Southside. Obviously, the criminals that are doing this killing, they don’t care who’s in office. I’ve got people calling me saying I’m scared to go get bread. Does that make you feel people believe the city is safe?”
