After 7 Homícídes in 9 Days Birmingham Mayor Randall Woodfin Wants to Use Tax Payer Money to Pay Crimínals to Behave.

[TheChronicle.cc] – Birmingham, AL - After 4 homícídes in as many days, bringing a total of 7 in 9 days, (including several more shootíngs, one targeting police officers) Mayor Randall Woodfin finally makes a public statement telling reporters he wants to explore using taxpayer funding to pay crimínals not to commit crîme.

He alludes to a controversial (and now discontinued) program in Richmond, CA which pays a stipend to crimínals based on how well they behave per month. The less crime they commit, the more they are paid - up to $1,300 a month. I suspect that many that don't have crimínal tendencies will probably go misbehave now simply because the profit margins are advantages. 

Currently Birmingham has one of the highest sales tax rates in Alabama due to Measure A and B which takes $27 million annually from the tax base for the purpose of hiring more police officers to fight crime and pay for the historic bankruptcy. Except after 3 years, the promised number of police officers has not been hired and logistically will not during the time promised to voters.

Mayor Woodfin also alluded to Detroit’s Greenlight Project which forces small business owners to install security cameras to aid police and make them available after 10PM. What has residents scratching their heads about that plan is the fact that many of these shootíngs have occurred in broad daylight (including a double homicide on Valentine's day involving his own cousin and which his own alleged illegality has been repeatedly whispered partly as possible motive) and another just this week which was in front of a popular pizza parlor in traffic on one of the city’s main streets as well as days earlier in Central Park.

In 2017 as newly elected mayor, Woodfin told reporters that his “new plan” to combat crime would be Ceasefire. This statement was surprising considering the fact that Ceasefire had already been in effect since 2014 during his stints as city attorney (a time when he was quietly double dipping and also served as president of the failing city school board) and is funded by Measure A. The Office of Violence Prevention was even created to oversee it, yet four years later they still have no strategic plan and violent crime increased every year consecutively since its implementation.

Meanwhile, after millions of additional dollars through taxes have been paid by residents, Birmingham remains one of America's most violent cities (ranked #1 by FBI crime statistics) with its police department being one of the most incompetent yet violent forces in the nation over the last 4 years; all of the recent victims (92% since 2017) have been Black or homeless (another problem); the Office of Violence Prevention has no strategic plan; in the last 4 murders in the last 4 days not a single arrest has been made; and Mayor Woodfin urges that “overall crime continues to trend downward” alluding to a 1% drop in property crimes over the last several years, while practically every other category has risen.