Birmingham sees its highest number of homicides in 20 years

Birmingham's 111 homicides last year mark the highest total in two decades, as the city saw more killings than many larger cities, such as Nashville, which is three times the size of Birmingham. There are far fewer killings in much larger cities, San Diego and Denver, El Paso and Austin.

What is happening in Birmingham?

While reporter Ramsey Archibald mapped the homicides to find clusters in certain neighborhoods, especially in west Birmingham, reporter Starr Dunigan spoke to residents of west Birmingham about what it's like to hear the gunshots and what can be done to improve Birmingham.

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A deeper look at the numbers

Reckon's Ramsey Archibald mapped Birmingham's homicides from last year and provided some context about where the killings did - and didn't - take place. Certain parts of the city saw higher homicide numbers than others. For instance, 16 people were killed in Five Points West, and 14 more in West End. Simply mapping the homicides doesn't tell the full story, but it can point toward patterns within the city.

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Mapping homicides in Birmingham in 2017

Birmingham's 111 homicides last year helped boost the Jefferson County total to 172, up from 151 in 2016. Points in red on this map show Birmingham's homicides, while other colors show homicides in other municipalities and in Jefferson County. (Having trouble with the map? Click through here)

Birmingham's 111 was by far the highest number, but there were other municipalities in Jefferson County with high totals. Fairfield stands out. That small city of just over 10,000 people had eight homicides last year, good for a murder rate of 7.4. For comparison, Birmingham's rate last year was 5.2.

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Aaron Harris working at his father's business, Corry's Restaurant, on Jan. 13. 2017.

Jonece Starr Dunigan | jdunigan@al.com

Dreams of opening a business in the city

Less than half a mile away from where Aaron Harris was cleaning up his father’s restaurant on Monday night, a man was shot but Harris didn’t notice the gunfire.

The 18-year-old Wenonah High School senior said shootings are normal in the west Birmingham neighborhood of Powderly. And that night, Harris was just following a rule he set for himself. If the shooting is far away, he goes through the day as usual. If gunshots erupt near his location, he drops to the floor.

But there are other times when he is surrounded by the warmth of the people at Corry’s Restaurant. They ask him about school and family as he prepares hefty to-go plates filled with Philly cheesesteak. During a community event called Powderly day, people will serve food for free and setup games for the youth.

Navigating between the gunfire and the goodness of the community is just part of the daily narrative in the tale of two Birminghams.

“It’s a comfortable city and it’s a frightening city,” Harris said.

The violence hasn’t touched Harris personally, but it got close on Jan. 31 when his classmate, 17-year-old Juzahris Webb, was gunned down while walking home from school. A week after his death, Isaiah Johnson, another 17-year-old Wenonah High student, died in an alley after being shot during what Birmingham police described as a gun deal. Students mourned in the hallways and classrooms for weeks, Harris said.

“It feels like the younger people are getting killed more than the older people,” Harris said. “It’s the stuff behind closed doors that causes all of the murders.”

But Harris said he’s not letting the homicides hinder his future in his hometown. After graduation, he plans to study culinary arts at Lawson State Community College before sending himself off to a four-year university to study business. The ultimate goal is to open up his own restaurant downtown. Maybe, by that time, the violence will go down.

“I believe someone will get into the minds of the people who are doing this so they will understand that everyone deserves the life God gave them,” Harris said.

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Angela Steele tells the story of how a bullet went through the roof of her Ensley home, causing it to leak. She said people were firing their guns into the air to celebrate New Year's 2017. This is the second time a bullet damaged her personal space.

Jonece Starr Dunigan | jdunigan@al.com

"How long are we going to talk about it until something gets done about it?"

Angela Steele escapes to Homewood or Vestavia Hills to get away from the gunshots in Ensley.

During certain holidays, celebratory gunfire can turn what could have been a quiet night into a battlefield. It’s as if the shooters are in competition with each other. Someone fires four shots in the air and the other will shoot five times. Maybe more.

Although the participants aren’t aiming at a person, the falling bullets have landed near Steele’s personal space before. During New Year’s two years ago, she found a bullet hole in the hood of her red Camaro. Around the same time last year, a bullet pierced through the roof, causing it to leak. It makes her wonder where they are going to land next.

“Now just imagine, what if it went through my bedroom while I was in there?” Steele asked. “A bullet doesn’t have any eyes. It can hit anybody.”

Inside the gymnasium at Brown Elementary School on Jan. 9, residents of the Belview Heights community talked about foxes and illegal dumping. Steele raised her hand to ask what the city can do to stop the shootings. Even after the holidays, Steele said the shootings happen like clockwork. The sound of it makes her depressed. Her children grew up hearing gunshots all their lives.

She stepped out of the meeting because she felt like she was hearing the same advice she always receives: contact police or the mayor’s office. Steele has a small book full of confirmation numbers given to her by the police department.

“We call the police and nothing gets done about it,” Steele said. “How long are we going to talk about it until something gets done about it?”

Steele tries to find some solace in her yard where she plants banana trees and evergreens. She even helps her neighbors spruce up their lawns so they can win beautification awards. Her neighbors are still concerned about the neighborhood and want it to be better and look better. But she completes her yard work with safety in mind. She thins out the bottom half of her bushes so no one can hide in them. She keeps a firearm on her while she is gardening.

“We can’t talk about beautification if they are shooting the sign up,” Steele said. “I’m seriously considering moving after 30 years of paying on my home. I still love my neighborhood, but some things you have to let go of.”

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An Ensley 18-year-old was shot to death Thursday, Jan. 3, 2018 outside a Warrior Road convenience store.

Jonece Starr Dunigan

Lock the door, hide in the back of the store

Not far from where the first fatal shooting of 2018 occurred on Warrior Road, a business owner tries to make sure everyone who comes through her doors enters with respect. She didn’t give Al.com her name, not in fear for herself, but to protect her family from any type of retaliation. Many of the residents in west Birmingham didn’t want to talk to the media for similar reasons.

For more than a decade, she has seen many of city’s crime problems from behind the bulletproof glass: the shootings, the drugs sales, the prostitution. But she makes sure those actions do not occur in her business. Even if that meant looking a drug dealer in the eyes and telling him not to come back to her lot anymore, which she did during the early years of her establishment.

The offenders were teens who she watched grow into adulthood. For some, the streets led them to their grave but have left the streets behind them.

“I told them, ‘When you have children. You’ll see the difference,’” she said. “What your children see you do, they will do. You have to want to change.”

Throughout the day, neighbors come to her store to pick up small items and drop off little details about their lives. Yet she never knows when she’s smiling at the next homicide victim.

She saw Jeremy Thompson, a 30-year-old father, often before a hail of gunfire took his life at Interstate 59 and Avenue I on May 29.

“He never bothered a soul,” she said. “But nowadays you don’t have to say too much for someone to pull a gun on you.”

Her neighbors don’t cause problems, she said. Some communities just don’t get along with each other and they settle their territorial disputes on properties that aren’t even theirs. She tries to leave the store by nightfall to stay safe. But many things happen in broad daylight. When she hears the rapid gunfire of a drive-by shooting, she will rush to lock the door and hide in the back of the store. It’s a different type of lifestyle than what she was raised in as a child in a military family.

“I’ve never been in a war zone before, but it sure feels like it,” she said. “It’s time for me to move on and I’ve been here long enough.”

But she also sees the community at its best after the danger. Neighbors will stop by the store or call to check if she is OK. She looks out for them too as she watches their homes from her window while they are gone. If she catches someone breaking in, she’ll call police.

She mentors the teens who walk inside the store and try to steal from her. If you want something, just ask, she tells them. She would rather give them the item for whatever change they have on them at the time than to have them get in the habit of stealing.

It all goes back to respect and care for her community, she said. That’s what kept her business running in the neighborhood for this long.

“I love what I do. I’m here for a service. If I’m not here, then my customers won’t get served,” she said. “I’ve lived many good years. Met some good people. I can’t ask for more than that.”

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Stephanie Hicks (right) preparing to talk to the teens who were involved in the Youth Career Readiness Initiative, a summer program focused on personal and professional improvements organized by the Offenders Alumni Association.

Jonece Starr Dunigan

"...we need to be excited about being a better Birmingham"

Eleven Jefferson County children below the age of 18 lost their lives due to homicides in 2017. The tally is almost double the number of children who were killed in 2016 and the highest count of youth deaths in a decade.

Stephanie Hicks, a 46-year-old mother of one son, believes she is witnessing the upbringing of a different generation. When a classmate died when she was in school, the cause of death would be a freak accident or a car wreck. Not a shooting.

Hicks was shocked at how the youth absorbed the death of their classmates. Her organization, the Offenders Alumni Association, mentored about 20 teens last summer during its Youth Career Readiness Initiative. They hosted sessions focused on personal improvements, such as goal setting and the importance of thinking before reacting. While chatting about community responsibility, the group stumbled upon the subject of looking out for each other. That’s when Terrius Hillard’s name popped up.

Hillard was 15 years old when he was shot in the chest while walking to a recreation center in the Ensley neighborhood in September. A few teens in the YCRI said they knew of the Jackson Olin student. One of them knew him on a personal level. Before long, the group was trying to knit together what little information they had to get the full story of the shooting.

“This is not what these kids need to be thinking about while trying to go to school and building careers for themselves so they can be productive in society,” Hicks said. “Our children have been desensitized to violence because it touches them so closely. More so than it did when I was a teenager.”

In response to the overall total of homicides, Birmingham police told Al.com in December that a risky social life and easy access to guns can increase a person’s chances in becoming a victim. Hicks said some people are lured to a risky lifestyle due to lack of resources.

Sometimes, it’s a lack of income to pay the bills. That’s how Hicks’ own story of embezzling $92,000 during her time as union president of the Birmingham's Veterans Affairs Hospital started. She and her then-teenage son were living off $400 every two weeks, she said. Her check was garnished because of student loans and a car loan due to a wreck she was involved in during a time she didn’t have insurance. She admits need eventually evolved into greed and she pleaded guilty to fraud and forgery in June 2015.

In some situations, there could be a lack of stability in the home, she said.

“If you are not protected at the home and you are in the streets, it’s about survival,” Hicks said. “If you don’t give someone a place to lay their heads in safety and they don’t have a means to be able to keep that place, there’s no hope. There’s no way of reaching of them.”

One of the ways to stop the violence is to become a stronger village, she said. People become so involved in their own private lives that they stop checking up on each other. But children who may come from broken homes may need a mentor to show them how to communicate their feelings without resorting to violence and how to become self-sufficient through successful career, Hicks said.

“We don’t have people who are pouring into the youth who need a good example,” Hicks said. “We have some, but we don’t have enough. We should be able to capture these children who want to do better.”

The elderly need voice as well, she said. Every second and fourth Saturday of the month, OAA knocks on senior citizens’ door to make sure their needs are met. During Christmas, they picked them up in their van and prepared them a meal. They also pick up trash off their streets and garden their lawns. Once the organization gained their trust by doing the little things, the elderly can contact them about their safety concerns. If criminals know that the community is protected, the elderly are less likely to be targeted for crime.

Hicks said the energy people used to elect the first Democratic senator in 25 years and the youngest Birmingham mayor in more than a century can be harnessed again.

“The same way we turned out the vote, is the same way we need to be in our communities checking on each other,” Hicks said. “As excited as we were about getting someone getting into office, we need to be excited about being a better Birmingham.”