Birmingham Police Chief Michael Pickett discusses city’s dramatic drop in homicides, latest crime trends

BIRMINGHAM, Ala. (WIAT) – The city of Birmingham has had less than half the number of homicides so far this year compared to this time last year. At this time in 2024, the city had seen 91 homicides, whereas this year, the city sits at 40.

“What we’ve been doing is we’ve been focusing in on those high crime areas, tailoring our patrols,” Birmingham Police Chief Michael Pickett said. “Also, the swift apprehension of a homicide suspect or a felony assault suspect to go ahead and get that individual in custody that helps to reduce retaliation.”

Pickett says the city is sitting around an 80% clearance rate on crimes. This is a trend he hopes to continue.

“If you do commit a crime in our city, you’re going to be held accountable. You’re going to be arrested. You’re going to be placed in jail,” he said.

With the significant decrease in homicides, Chief Pickett believes it shows the community that the police department is laser focused and locked in.

“We’re not going to have a year like we had last year in 2024. We’re about to shift this. We’re about to make this community safer,” said Pickett. “I grew up in Birmingham. I love Birmingham, and it’s a safe community. But because of, you know, the actions of a few and yes, we did have a difficult year last year. It was very important that we came together as a police department, and we showed up for our community and essentially taken our streets back.”

While violent crime as a whole is down, the city has seen an increase in property crimes.

“It’s just the crime trends. Sometimes things go up, things go down. So what we try to do is when we do identify a trend, we want to deploy resources to those areas,” Pickett said. “We have to look at the different ways that criminals, I guess, want to maneuver in their criminal activity. So it’s a cat and mouse game. When they come up with some new tactic, we have to study it. So there’s always going to be just a slight delay between what a criminal does and what law enforcement does.”

You can watch the full sit-down interview with Chief Pickett below: