By: Donald V. Watkins
Copyrighted and Published on October 14, 2024
An Editorial Opinion
Crisis management firms do a wonderful job of putting mascara on ugly blemishes. Here is a classic example how they work.
The Birmingham police department, which is severely understaffed, is in the midst of a law enforcement crisis. Public safety in the city has collapsed.
The department is struggling to prevent skyrocketing daily homicides and frequent mass shootings in the city. The staffing shortage has also severely hampered the department's ability to solve these homicides, mass shootings, and other violent crimes.
How did the police department get in such terrible shape? The answer lies in Mayor Randall Woodfin's first budget presentation in May 2018.
An independent media organization named BirminghamWatch lays it out for us:
"The Birmingham Police Department will receive roughly $4 million less than it did in last year’s budget, dropping from $98,026,464 to $93,944,712. That’s largely because 47 positions from the department are being eliminated, including one deputy police chief, 17 corrections officers, two correctional supervisors, four park rangers and five public safety dispatchers, among others."
Over the years, Mayor Woodfin eliminated more police department positions. Eventually, Woodfin funded only 725 of the 912 police positions required for adequate public safety in Birmingham. Even then, the number of sworn officers working in the department kept shrinking until it reached about 400 officers a few months ago.
Today, Mayor Woodfin is attempting to duck responsibility for the police staffing shortage by saturating the media with a slick PR campaign that makes it look like he is doing something about the problem he created. Woodfin's efforts in this regard are too little, too late.
Thanks to Mayor Woodfin, Birmingham has ascended from the No. 3 most dangerous city in the U.S., as ranked by Forbes Magazine, to the "Murder Capital of the U.S." No amount of crisis management or PR campaigning changes this sad fact.
Mayor Woodfin's PR campaign is NOT a sincere attempt to save Birmingham from its long, slow, painful death. Instead, it is a self-serving attempt by Woodfin to save his re-election chances in 2025.
Privately, Mayor Woodfin knows that he messed up in a big way by gutting his police department. However, Woodfin believes he can successfully hoodwink his Birmingham political constituents one more time, as he has done so many times in the past.
Can he?
This is Birmingham's national image today, thanks to Mayor Randall Woodfin.