By: Donald V. Watkins
Copyrighted and Published on May 17, 2024
An Editorial Opinion
The street gangs, drug dealers, and career criminals who control the streets of Birmingham, Alabama, have now found powerful new allies in the international drug trafficking and national street gang world. They have aligned themselves with powerful, hardcore, extremely violent international drug cartel kinpins and national street gang leaders.
Inside the growing underworld of international drug cartels and national street gangs, the leadership cadre of these criminal enterprises realize that Birmingham’s public safety platform has totally collapsed. Policing is crippled to the point of paralysis. Today, Birmingham has 300 fewer police officers on the streets than the 900 sworn officers authorized by, and funded in, the city’s annual budget.
International drug cartels and national street gangs also know that Birmingham city officials have no effective plan to combat violent street crime. The entire city is viewed as a soft target for drug trafficking, drive-by shootings, and VICAR murders.
Criminal prosecutions of street gang members and drug kingpins are virtually non-existent in Birmingham. The city’s residents are essentially unprotected from this gang violence.
Birmingham’s elected officials are bossed by powerful special interest groups and corporate businesses that fund their campaigns during election season. The actions taken by these captive city officials are controlled by political forces that are beyond the reach of voters in the city. As long as the surging street violence is confined to black-on-black crime within this predominantly black and shrinking city, these special interest groups do not care about the explosion of street violence and endless stream of murder victims in Birmingham.
Today, international drug kingpins and national street gangs view Birmingham as a launchpad for expanding their lucrative drug trafficking enterprises and associated gang violence to Homewood, Vestavia Hills, Hoover, Mountain Brook, and other suburban communities surrounding Birmingham. Along with their planned expansion of drug trafficking territories will come a surge in violent carjackings, VICAR murders, witness tampering, armed robberies, and mass shootings in what used to be considered “safe” suburban neighborhoods.
Homewood, Vestavia Hills, Hoover, Mountain Brook, and other suburban communities must brace themselves for an invasion of gang-related racketeering activities, drug trafficking, and street violence perpetrated by international drug cartels and national street gangs on a scale they have never seen before.
From a law enforcement standpoint, the Birmingham-metro area is not prepared today for the scale and scope of the invasion of drug trafficking, gang-related activities, and violent crimes that these sophisticated international and national criminal enterprises have in mind.
Federal, state, and local law enforcement agencies in Jefferson County, Alabama simply do not have the experience or expertise to effectively combat hardcore international criminal enterprises.
Historically, law enforcement agencies in Alabama have used their resources to further ultra-conservative political agendas in the state that disadvantaged women, poor people, and blacks, from the "cradle to the grave." Combatting serious crime was a secondary function.
The war zone of violent criminal activity that is known today as "Birmingham, Alabama" will spread to metro-Birmingham and its surrounding suburbs fairly soon. The strategic alliance between international drug cartels, national street gangs, and local Birmingham gangs has already been made. The execution of this territorial expansion will be swift and violent.
Prison sentences and death on the streets mean nothing to these hardcore criminals. In fact, the leaders of these cartels and gangs often run their criminal enterprises from prison.
Much of the expected surge in violent crime in the metro-Birmingham area will be driven primarily by the trafficking of the potent synthetic opioid known as Fentanyl. The target market for today's Fentanyl sales is suburban Birmingham. The collapse of policing in Birmingham has paved the way for the easy expansion of Fentanyl trafficking into the suburbs.
There is not a federal, state, or local prosecutor in Birmingham who is qualified and capable of defeating these international and national criminal enterprises. Local law enforcement agencies can barely handle run-of-the-mill street crimes like shoplifting, burglary, drug possession offenses, assault and battery, public corruption, homicides, and low-impact white-collar offenses.
Prim F. Escalona, the U.S. Attorney in Birmingham, is a Donald Trump-holdover who has zero experience prosecuting criminal cases. No hardcore, violent, street criminal fears her.
Danny Carr, the District Attorney for Jefferson County, spends nearly all of his time giving speeches, accepting awards from community groups, and taking photos for social media. Violent street criminals pay absolutely no attention to him.
Steve Marshall, Alabama’s Attorney General, spends his waning days in office trying to score cheap political points with the state's MAGA crowd, often on the backs of women, poor people, and blacks in the state. Marshall does not have the time, interest, ability, or courage to combat and defeat international drug kingpins and national street gangs. We can usually find Steve Marshall in the entourage of supporters that attends the out-of-state criminal trials of high-profile Republican defendants.
The deluge of violence in the streets of Birmingham will also flood the streets of Homewood, Vestavia Hills, Hoover, Mountain Brook, and other suburbs over the next few years. Suburban homeowners must get ready for it, along with the attendant devaluation of their property values as a result of this out-of-control and extremely violent criminal activity.
Another hard-hitting and undeniable commentary about the city that I formerly called "home".
If there were a "Part II" or a subtitle to this piece - it might read: Do I NOW have your attention? Honestly I have never quite understood how these suburbs stayed immune (from the crime next door) for so long - anyhoo, they're about to find out what decades of generational poverty, combined with an economic collapse + fentanyl really looks like.
And while some blame could and probably should be placed on Woodfin - he's an easy target. The guy is clearly out of his depth, a tad bit immature for his age, and hard to take seriously as a leader.
Dare I say a useful…