Ensley homicide prompts talk of crime at City Council meeting

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There was a homicide on Monday night in Ensley near the Belview Heights community, according to several media reports.

And the killing, which is the 55th in Birmingham so far in 2019, prompted a tense exchange between Mayor Randall Woodfin and City Council member Steven Hoyt — a long-time Belview Heights resident — at the Council’s regular meeting today.

Hoyt said that he and his neighbors in the area are “very concerned” about recent killings in Belview Heights and Ensley.

“People are scared; people are terrorized,” he said.

And Hoyt told Woodfin that he wants to know what the city will do to fight crime more effectively. “I need to know a plan,” he said.

He said that Birmingham police should get tougher on crime and adopt a “zero-tolerance” approach, even if it means some lawsuits against the city.

And Hoyt suggested that the city may need outside help to fight crime. “Maybe we should call in the National Guard to come in and help us control this city,” Hoyt said.

“Our young people are dying by degrees,” he said.

However, Woodfin stated flatly that the city will not be calling out the National Guard.

He said that the Birmingham Police Department has taken more than 500 guns off the street since January. “I wish we could take every one,” he said.

And he tried to reassure the people of Belview Heights. “Your neighborhood is very safe,” said Woodfin, who added that most of the people involved in homicides in the city know each other and have been involved in disputes that come to a violent resolution.

“These are not random killings, random murders,” he said. “They are interactions between people who know each other.”

He also quarreled with Hoyt’s use of the term “terror” to describe a climate of fear among residents. “There is no terror in Belview Heights,” Woodfin said. “There are things that are happening that are very personal in nature."

And he said the city will continue to “throw every resource at the problem” and to take more illegal guns off the street.

“I don't know if that’s satisfactory,” Hoyt said in response to Woodfin.

“Terror is something that's real,” said Hoyt, who said that even his wife and daughter are now afraid to come home unless he is there to make sure they get in the house safely.

“If you don't know how to fight (crime), ask someone else to come in and help,” he told Woodfin.

On May 21, Birmingham Police Chief Patrick D. Smith — on the job since June 2018 — gave the Council a report on violent crime in the city.

Smith said that homicides in Birmingham had increased from 51 in 2014 to 100 in 2018 and that the city was on pace so far this year to match that 2018 total.

However, there are “some signs of progress,” Smith said.

“We’re doing what we can to address crime in the city,” he said.