Birmingham Receives $300,000 DOJ Safe Neighborhoods Grant

Multi-Faceted Approach to Target Violent Gang and Gun Crime

            BIRMINGHAM -- The U.S. Department of Justice in September granted the City of Birmingham nearly $300,000 for a program that combines intensified enforcement in high-crime neighborhoods with literacy education and increased supervision and support during probation and parole in a comprehensive approach aimed at reducing gun crime and gang violence, announced U.S. Attorney Joyce White Vance.

            DOJ's Bureau of Justice Assistance awarded a Project Safe Neighborhoods grant of $294,867 over two years to Birmingham for its Violent Gang and Gun Crime Reduction Program. The city will use the grant to reduce gang gun violence in Birmingham by implementing saturation patrols in areas with the highest gun crime, and by increasing supervision of at-risk probationers and parolees who live in the high gun-crime areas, according to the grant notification from DOJ's Office of Justice Programs. Birmingham also will implement a Better Basics literacy program for children living in those high crime areas.

            The federal PSN program is designed to create safer neighborhoods through a sustained reduction in gun crime and gang violence. The program's effectiveness depends on the cooperation of local, state and federal agencies engaged in a unified approach led by the U.S. attorney. The U.S. Attorney's Office in the Northern District of Alabama has developed numerous partnerships in the Birmingham area, over several years, to help implement a comprehensive PSN strategy to reduce violent crime in the city.

            "My office has an effective PSN Task Force that includes law enforcement at all levels," Vance said, "but it also includes researchers and community service providers and support organizations because law enforcement alone will not solve the problem of violent crime," she said. "This DOJ grant will support the multi-faceted approach necessary to fight the crime and to fight the deficits in education and support services that lead new generations into crime and lead those who have served their time in prison to return to crime."

            "This grant will help us to achieve the goal of ultimately creating a safer city," said Birmingham Mayor William A. Bell Sr. "The joint effort and interagency support is key to allowing the city to really make great strides in making street-level changes that impact us all.”

            "We believe this grant will definitely benefit our efforts to build and sustain a comprehensive approach to reducing violent crime and delinquency in our city," said Birmingham Police Chief A.C. Roper. "This funding will enhance the great teamwork and collaboration amongst our law enforcement agencies and community partners.” 

            “Pardons and Paroles values its partnership with the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Northern District, the City of Birmingham, and local community providers as we strategically proceed with creating a safer community by reducing gun crime and gang violence together," said Alabama Pardons and Paroles Board Member Robert P. Longshore. "Funding for much needed agency staff through this grant opportunity will bolster the efforts the state is making to increase public safety by investing in Alabama’s probation and parole officer workforce," he said. "Our local office is committed to dedicating resources in this effort to target high-risk/violent supervised offenders to protect public safety, and assisting with a call-in program to curb the likelihood that supervised offenders will commit new, firearm-based offenses.”

            The grant-funded multi-dimensional approach to reducing gang gun violence will bring together the mayor's office, the Birmingham Police Department, the University of Alabama at Birmingham, The Alabama Board of Pardons and Paroles, the non-profit Dannon Project and the Better Basics literacy program.

             The city will employ a researcher from UAB to analyze crime and gunshot data to identify the city's violent crime hotspots. The Birmingham Police Department's Neighborhood Enforcement Team and Crime Reduction Team will saturate those hotspots with patrols and will add equipment and training to enhance the department's capacity to combat firearms crime. The Community Policing and Revitalization program in the mayor's office will increase programming within the designated hot spots.

            The state pardons and paroles board will work with the U.S. Attorney's Office, the U.S. Marshall Service and the Birmingham Police Department to identify high-risk probationers and parolees and designate them for intensified monitoring, which will make those supervisees eligible for U.S. Department of Labor-funded job-training services from The Dannon Project.

            To address the link between academic failure and delinquency, violence and crime, Better Basics will increase its literacy programs for elementary students in schools within identified areas of high violent crime.

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