Gang Warfare Caused Saturday Night Massacre in Five Points South

By: Donald V. Watkins

Copyrighted and Published on September 29, 2024

An Editorial Opinion

Birmingham, Alabama is caught up in the deadly grip of gang violence. Presently, two heavily armed drug trafficking street gangs are fighting for control of Birmingham’s revitalized, predominantly white Southside and the area surrounding the University of Alabama at Birmingham.  This territory is considered a “honey pot” for competing drug trafficking gangs in Birmingham.

In 2006, the city closed its South precinct station in the Highland Avenue area. A few years later, the city closed its Five Points South police sub-station, which was directly across the street from where the Saturday Night Massacre occurred a week ago. 

Today, Birmingham’s Southside is virtually unprotected, thanks to a police force that employs only 400 of the 912 sworn officers needed to provide adequate public safety within Birmingham’s 151 square miles of territory.

Lame-duck President Joe Biden, Vice President Kamala Harris, and Birmingham Mayor Randal Woodfin met in Washington last week to announce a presidential executive order that restricts machinegun conversion devices and un-serialized, 3D-printed firearms.  This presidential initiative will NOT make a dent in Birmingham’s gang-related homicides, mass shootings, and street massacres.

Birmingham’s problem is NOT complicated: The city lacks the police officers needed to protect its residents.  The police department is understaffed by 56% (or 512 officers). Police patrols within the city's 99 neighborhoods and communitiesare are virtually non-existent.

Presently, rival gangs are putting more heavily armed thugs on the streets of Birmingham than Mayor Woodfin provides in sworn police officers.  What is worse, these gang members are willing to give up blood in order to get blood from rival gang members.

Because the city's police force is so severely understaffed, rival gangs rule the streets of Birmingham and engage in murder, mass shootings, and massacres at-will.

Mayor Woodfin has no plan of action to restore the city's police force to 912 sworn officers.  Instead, salary money that is earmarked in the annual city budget for the unfilled police positions is routinely redirected by Woodfin to pet projects for the “over-the-mountain” crowd and his political friends who provide vendor services without deliverables.

In addition to the Saturday Night Massacre in Five Points South a week ago, the bodies of homicide victims continue to pile up daily on the streets of Birmingham. Gang warfare in Birmingham is also killing residential and commercial property values in the city and surrounding suburbs.

Tren de Aragua is Here

Tren de Aragua, a powerful transnational criminal gang that originated in a Venezuela prison, has made its way to Birmingham, Alabama.  This gang is much more violent than the Bloods, Crips, MS-13, and Disciples who ruled the streets of Birmingham during the last seven years. They are wreaking havoc in the city.

Having overrun Birmingham's streets with ease, the very gangs that glorify cop-killing and engage in murder as a right of passage for gang initiation are now eying Birmingham’s Southside, Lakeview nightlife district, and suburban communities as fertile territory for expanding their criminal enterprises.  These gangs view Birmingham’s dwindling law enforcement response to their increasingly violent drug dealing, robberies, carjacking, theft-rings, murders, drive-by shootings, and massacres as weak, timid, and reactive.

Unfortunately for Birmingham residents, they are right.  Law enforcement personnel, state and federal prosecutors, and many state and federal judges in the Birmingham-metro area are afraid of these increasingly violent street gangs.  The gang that was targeted and hit in the Five Points South Saturday Night Massacre is already planning its retaliation.  The only question is when, where, and how many innocent victims will be killed during this retaliatory strike. 

Mayoral press conferences in Birmingham, White House visits, and slick PR gimmicks on social media will not make Birmigham safe. More police boots on the ground will.