“Then the Lord said to Cain, ‘Where is your brother Abel?’
‘I don’t know,’ he replied. ‘Am I my brother’s keeper?’
The Lord said, ‘What have you done? Listen! Your brother’s blood cries out to me from the ground…”
—Genesis 4:9-10
I sit on my back porch in my old childhood neighborhood in Montgomery, listening to birds chirp and sing as the wind whips through the sunlit trees.
It’s very peaceful here during the day, a good place to write if one can stand the heat and humidity, and except for the violent summer thunder, the nights are always quiet here as well.
I came of age in this neighborhood but forgot its peace and quiet. Perhaps, in my youth, I simply lacked the perspective to notice or the wisdom to care.
It wasn’t until I moved back here almost two years ago that I began to slowly but surely appreciate its peaceful days and quiet nights in contrast to other parts of the city.
Living in several other spots around Montgomery in the preceding years, I grew much too accustomed to hearing gunshots on the horizon almost every night as I laid my head on the pillow. It was such a regular occurrence that I began referring to the distant discharges as the “Montgomery Lullaby.”
What should have disturbed me left me undisturbed. Yet now, the peace and quiet of my childhood neighborhood speaks with disturbing silence. Here, Montgomery seems like a town with crime nowhere to be found.
Yet, over the horizon, I know that the nighttime gunshots thunder louder and more violently than any summer storm. Over the horizon, some poor souls might even die in the daytime. Over the horizon, in certain parts of town, Montgomery might even seem like a place where people are killed in cold blood every day.
A couple of months ago, “The Taboo Room with Aaron S” channel on YouTube uploaded a documentary called “Welcome to Montgomery, AL: Where People Are Killed Every Day in Cold Blood.”
After I shared it on social media in April, I received pushback from some folks invested in protecting Montgomery’s image for sharing such a “sensationalized” look at the city. Despite the provocative title (obviously there weren’t 365 homicides last year), I found the documentary to be a raw and honest look at parts of Montgomery far from my neighborhood’s peace and quiet.
To the relief of local critics, the video was soon removed from YouTube for copyright complaints. I suspect a certain local news affiliate didn’t like their nightly news clips being used to frame such raw, uncensored content. However, the video has since been re-uploaded, and I encourage every Alabamian to watch it.
If we’re being literal with Montgomery’s homicide statistics, the video should probably be titled, “Where People Are Killed Every Week in Cold Blood,” but after watching the documentary’s showcase of a certain wayward-son subculture in Montgomery, the statistical rise in homicides starts to come into vivid living color. When the blood of one’s brother cries out from the ground, the effects are much more tragic than a simple rise in statistics. Yet, statistics are usually all we have to reckon with such carnage.
Simply put, the number of annual homicides in Montgomery has basically doubled since Mayor Steven Reed took over from Mayor Todd Strange, going from roughly 35 people killed each year on average, to nearly 70 now. Exact numbers aside, the trend is real, and as the baseline number of homicides has risen, so, too, have force levels at Montgomery Police Department declined, nearly cut in half (though exact officer levels are hard to come by.)
This is why the Metro Area Crime Suppression Unit (MACS) was established in June 2024, essentially forced on the city by county and state law enforcement. Some progress has come since MACS was formed, with Reed last week saying that violent crime is down 28% since last year. Upon seeing the mayor’s press conference, I wasn’t sure if I believed the statistics, but I was willing to give the benefit of the doubt for an improving trend.
Nonetheless, something didn’t feel quite right – like the stats didn’t quite grasp the rawness of the underlying problem I saw in the documentary. To be fair, Reed readily acknowledges more needs to be done, but I have the haunting sense that his most recent presentation was like a halftime scoreboard with two whole quarters left to go in the game.
Then the weekend came. It was a bloody one for Montgomery.
At least two young men are dead, apparently killed in cold blood, in what police confirmed to be related shootings. Another person was shot and critically injured near Fitzpatrick Elementary school Saturday afternoon, and two more people in unrelated incidents were shot with non-life-threatening gun wounds in the area of the Ann Street Walmart.
“I thought crime was down,” was my first thought upon seeing the weekend news. “I stopped going to that Walmart years ago,” was my next thought.
I used to live right next to it. I guess the horizon was closer than I wanted to believe as I drifted to sleep on those unhappy lullabies. Hopefully, the horizon doesn’t continue to creep.
People aren’t killed in cold blood every day in Montgomery – definitely not in my childhood neighborhood where I sit and write in peace and quiet watching the Sunday sunset through the trees (it might as well be a different city!) – but after a weekend like this one, it can certainly feel as though too many wayward sons in Montgomery are still asking, “Am I my brother’s keeper?”
Joey Clark is a native Alabamian and is currently the host of the radio program News and Views on News Talk 93.1 FM WACV out of Montgomery, AL, M-F 12 p.m. - 3 p.m. His column appears every Tuesday in 1819 News. To contact Joey for media or speaking appearances, as well as any feedback, please email [email protected]. Follow him on X @TheJoeyClark or watch the radio show livestream.
The views and opinions expressed here are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the policy or position of 1819 News. To comment, please send an email with your name and contact information to [email protected].
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