Curfews, Cars, and Clothes

In response to the city’s continuing rise in deadly violence, the mayor and other officials have turned their attention to combating curfew violators and sagging trousers.

A rash of fatal shootings in Birmingham during the weekend of July 4th—including two in the Five Points South entertainment district—prompted city officials to focus not on the city’s underfunded and short-staffed police department but on curfews, sagging pants, and the confiscation of vehicles to mitigate Birmingham’s reputation as one of the most dangerous cities in America. According to Mayor Larry Langford and city councilors, parents are primarily to blame for the city’s crime woes. At the July 8 City Council meeting, Langford, who has insisted time and again that parents have a greater role than the police do in combating area crime, trotted out his well-worn tale about how stern his own mother was. “My mother had a curfew: ‘Have your butt in this house by the time those street lights come on or I will kill you,” shared the mayor. “She didn’t need the police or nobody else, and I’ve got the scars on my back to prove it!” To further illustrate how far local parenting standards have sunk, Langford added that he recently spoke at Birmingham’s Family Court regarding gun violations. He opening his speech with a prayer. “I said to the group, ‘Let’s repeat the Lord’s Prayer.’ But the mayor was shocked at what he found, “I am not making this up,” said Langford. “Neither the parents nor the children could give you the opening verse!” Councilor Roderick Royal addressed proposed legislation directed at parental responsibility that includes outlawing the fashion, popular with many black youth, of positioning jeans well below the level they were designed to be worn. Royal blamed the “culture of violence, all this sagging [pants] and all this different music. . . . And this culture is not good for us because it’s a gang culture. And all you have to do is turn on BET. Now, I don’t let my children watch BET. I don’t want them to literally think that this is the way people are supposed to behave, walking around in the middle of the street with their pants around their ankles and after every step they’ve got to pull them up.” Langford then played a DVD containing footage from a city-owned surveillance camera of a July 5, 3:30 a.m. shooting outside Banana Joe’s in Five Points South. A 16-year-old has been charged with killing two men and wounding two others. The incident followed a “family-style” holiday festival earlier that evening that was sponsored by the Five Points South merchants association. Langford noted that there were five police officers standing near the club’s parking lot entrance and that after being ejected from the club for fighting, the perpetrator walked past the cops to retrieve a gun from his car and then walked past the officers once again before opening fire in a small crowd some 60 feet from the police. “He shot them with a .40 caliber Smith & Wesson handgun,” said the mayor. “But he had four semi-automatic weapons in the car. And one of the semi-automatic weapons was lying on top of, of all things, a Bible.” Langford told the council that though their investment in surveillance cameras had paid off, “all the cameras in the world and all the cops in the world will not stop us from killing each other. Only mamas and daddies can do that!”

Under Birmingham’s existing curfew ordinance, no one under 17 is allowed on the street between 10 p.m. and 6 a.m., Sunday through Thursday, and midnight to 6 a.m. on Friday and Saturday. After lamenting that many of today’s youth not only had no respect for the police or any authority figure but also showed no fear of them, Langford strongly urged the council to stiffen fines for curfew violations. Where an initial curfew violation currently results in a written warning to the parent, Langford wants a $500 fine. A second offense would entail a $500 fine instead of the current $25 fine. A third offense currently results in a $500 fine, but a parent or legal guardian may additionally face incarceration for six months. The mayor did not address the issue of how a parent is supposed to force a teenager strapped with several semi-automatic weapons to stay home if the child is not inclined to do so.

• • •On July 12, three dozen police officers responded to a report of a disturbance at a youth club near the 4th Avenue Civil Rights district. At a July 14 meeting called by the Council to discuss the proposed city budget, Langford said that this latest event prompted him to speak with Governor Bob Riley about a bill currently sponsored by state representative Linda Coleman that would allow Class One municipalities such as Birmingham to take possession of any vehicle in which a gun is found, even if not in the possession of an occupant, but for which the proper permit cannot be produced. Langford warned, “Whoever owns the car, forfeits the car. You tell me what these teenagers love better than their cars. Nothing. And if necessary, you better frisk your friends before you let them in your car. Otherwise you run the risk of losing your car.” The mayor added that the legislation will have difficulty passing state approval “because of the love affair we have with guns in Alabama.”

At the July 15 council meeting, an obviously weary Mayor Langford referenced the events of the previous two weekends. “This past weekend—as if we didn’t have enough trouble at the Banana Joe’s establishment—at the L.R. Hall Auditorium we had to dispatch 36 police officers down there because these children were out there in mass numbers, and we got reports of windows in businesses being shot out. First of all, I’m not in favor of gun control, I just want gun responsibility. . . . These children got guns like you would not believe. And they want to use these guns!”

Langford also had a couple of requests for future gun violators. “If you just must have a gun and violate our ordinances, please have a Lexus, so we can get our officers some better comfortable cars to drive,” he pleaded. “And if you’re going to have an SUV and carry that mess, please put a couple of those little TVs in it so that when we pick you up and take you in, you can just watch television all the way to jail. If you’re just going to act a fool, we may as well tell you right now, ‘Give us the good stuff!’”

Mayor Langford, however, was reluctant to embrace the proposed ordinance forbidding sagging pants that Councilor Royal referenced the previous week. Langford asked the council not to approve the proposed legislation, as it falls under parental responsibility. “I don‘t want to look at somebody’s nasty little underwear, to begin with,” admitted the mayor. “I don‘t find anything enticing about it that makes me want to roll down the window and say, ‘Go brother!’” Langford said parents must take responsibility, not government. “We cannot legislate ourselves out of this mess. Now, I know that when I was a kid I had a big Afro—all you could see were my eyes and teeth. And kids are gonna be children. We’re not trying to take away the youth of a child. But as far as when your child leaves your home and has that little nasty underwear showing, you knew it [and failed to stop it].”

The council is scheduled to vote on increasing fines for curfew violations at its July 22 meeting. The vehicle confiscation ordinance must first be approved by the state legislature. &