Mixed reaction to anti-crime program which blocks some Birmingham streets
By Sara Güven, Reflect Alabama Fellow
Streets in Birmingham’s East Lake neighborhood are now blocked by brightly painted concrete barriers and houseplants in a new effort by Mayor Randall Woodfin to reduce crime.
They’ve been placed there by the mayor’s office as part of a new initiative in a neighborhood plagued by shootings, drug dealing, prostitution and more. The effort, called Safe Streets, launched at the beginning of July. The program also includes traffic calming measures and garbage cleaning efforts.
According to Woodfin, reducing access to the area and cleaning dilapidated streets will make it more difficult for people to conduct illegal activities. He said the effort is informed by data from cities across the country that have implemented similar methods.
Woodfin said extensive surveys were conducted with residents through a door-knocking campaign. He said his office spoke to 350 residents inside the barriers, with 90% of them supporting the plan.
However, residents who spoke with WBHM offered a range of opinions on the initiative.
Mimi Freeman, an East Lake resident for 14 years, strongly approved of the barricades. She said criminal activity has worsened over time.
“It was not this bad in crime when I was younger. You had the occasional robbery, maybe a car break-in, something like that,” Freeman said. “But it was never this bad where it was a murder, a killing, a drive-by shooting every single day of the week.”
She appreciated the effort, and wants more barricades to be put up.
Darell Nance, who’s lived in East Lake for six years, was grateful for Woodfin’s attempt to address the neighborhood’s issues, but questioned if barricades were the most effective means to do so.
“A lot of the efforts, I think could be achieved without putting a bunch of barriers in place and making residents feel like they’re locked in,” Nance said.
He worried the barricades will not do enough and that the attention on the neighborhood will fade.
“I feel like we’re going to get 90 days of attention and then this is going to fall off and it’s going to be back to business as usual type of thing,” Nance said.
Russell Hooks, a resident since 2019, initially had some concerns.
“I joked, as long as it’s not Escape from New York, where they just block off the neighborhood and just let everything inside that neighborhood happen,” Hooks said.
He’s since grown more willing to consider the barricades as a solution, especially since they are accompanied by other efforts. Still, he preferred a different solution for the long term.
“My hope is that it won’t be permanent. They can do the pilot program, maybe do a little bit longer, and at some point, figure out a different solution – just for the convenience of having the roads open,” Hooks said. “But I definitely understand why they did it the way they did, given the limited resources of the (police) officers.”
Jason Hameric shared a similar view. He opposed the barricades and said they make their neighborhood seem like a prison.
“If you isolate people and make them feel like they’re around walls, they have nothing to expect but that,” he said.
Hameric said he’s lived in Birmingham all his life, but felt the issue of crime has him considering leaving.
“When my wife and I decided to buy a house and start a business, we wanted to make sure that Birmingham got our tax money because we believe in the city. And we stayed here for that reason,” Hameric said. “It’s the first time we’ve ever thought about taking our business and our house somewhere else, because we feel like it’s on a downward spiral.”
Residents said they have seen a decrease in traffic, but noted that traffic may have shifted to other streets. Some residents expressed concern about the barricades’ effect on property value.
The barriers will remain in place until October, the end of the pilot phase. After that, the program will be evaluated to determine next steps.
After his mother’s death, Ocean Vuong wrote his way out of grief
Vuong's new novel, The Emperor of Gladness, is the first he's written, from start to finish, since his mother died in 2019. He says writing it was a way to honor her memory.
Trump says he and Musk ‘had a great relationship. I don’t know if we will anymore’
Trump said he was surprised that his former adviser Elon Musk is scorching the Republican megabill, but said he thought Musk was wrong and conflicted in his criticism.
Concerns over conditions in U.S. immigration detention: ‘We’re hearing the word “starving” ‘
ICE detentions have surged, but deportations have lagged. Over the past month, NPR spoke to dozens of detainees, families and lawyers who spoke of overcrowded facilities lacking food and medicine.
In vitro fertilization emerges as a central issue in the Alabama state Supreme Court race
An Alabama fertility lawyer announced her candidacy for the state Supreme Court, emphasizing her personal experience with in vitro fertilization and blasting a controversial 2024 decision that ruled frozen embryos can be considered children under state law.
FBI Director Patel, a longtime bureau critic, begins to put his stamp on the agency
Since taking the helm more than 100 days ago, Patel has yet to shutter the FBI headquarters and reopen it as a museum as he once said he would, but he has begun trying to remake the bureau.
Why inflation data won’t include prices from these cities in Utah, Nebraska and New York
The federal government is scaling back data collection used to calculate the inflation rate. Economists warn that could make for less accurate cost-of-living measures.