‘Unsafe’ Birmingham May Need National Guard to Help Shorthanded Police After Mass Shooting, Lawmaker Says

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.

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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. {snip}

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“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. {snip}”

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