By Roy S. Johnson, The Associated Press
It’s a lot of money. A whole helluva lot of money.
Yet is it enough?
Twenty-five thousand dollars is more than most of us have seen at one time—cash or check.
Yet is it enough?
Twenty-five thousand dollars is enough to do a lot.
To put a down payment on most homes.
To erase a whole helluva lot of debt.
To buy a new car. To travel to (toss a dart at a map and go).
To educate a child. Yet is it enough? Is it enough to entice someone to emerge from a cave of fear and reveal information that may solve a crime? May solve a shooting. Of a child. An innocent. A child now with wounds that will physically heal but who will long remain psychologically.
A child forever haunted by a nightmare too real.
A child who cried, “Why did those people shoot me?” Is it enough to solve the murder of a child? A child gone. Buried by a mother still enduring an unspeakable pain.
A pain no parent should bear.
A pain worst than their own death.
Last month, Birmingham mayor Randall Woodfin stood before a collective that prays it is enough. In just a week, they raised $125,000 ($25,000 for each of the five unsolved cases) to up the reward for information leading to the arrests of those responsible for the shootings of five children under the age of 10 this year, including the murder of one.
Two-year-old Major Turner died on February 5, hours after bullets penetrated what should have been the safe walls of his Kimbrough Homes apartment.
No one has been arrested for his murder.
A five-year-old boy was among those shot on April 4, Easter Sunday, at W.C. Patton Park in East Birmingham, a park named for the former national voting education director of the NAACP, and head of the state NAACP.
No one has been arrested for his shooting.
A nine-year-old boy was shot at home in the 4700 block of Ave T on May 5.
No one has been arrested for his shooting.
Nine-year-old Kaitlynn Grady was shot in the arm as her mom was being a Good Samaritan on May 18. Barely a month ago. The family stopped its own car when Katrina Grady, a certified nurse assistant, saw a disabled vehicle on Warrior Road and Avenue N and told her husband to stop to see if anyone was hurt.
Then her daughter was. Police think gunfire emerged from a vehicle driving by.
No one has been arrested for her shooting.
A one-year-old—please pray he retains no memory of this—was spared on June 5 when shots were fired into a car in which he was riding. His father, 25, was killed, as was another man.
No one has been arrested for this shooting.
The previous award was $5,000.
Is twenty-five thousand dollars enough?
It may be. Yet it may not.
David Northern, Sr. believes the ante must be upped. He’s the new CEO of the Housing Authority Birmingham Division. He was hired last winter but Day 1 wasn’t official until early February—a week before Major Turner was killed.
He was among the collective last month who stood at City Hall. “Enough is enough,” he said.
Northern is proposing what may just be enough to overcome the fear, to douse the “no-snitch” culture” that prevents so many from coming forward: Northern calls it a witness relocation program.
It offers hope beyond money: a new home. A chance to move beyond. To move beyond the fear of retaliation. The fear of death.
Northern says he’s used it at least three times during his career in public housing. “It was something needed, and we created a policy to satisfy a need,” he says. In essence, HABD leverages the network of public housing communities nationwide to offer a witness a new home, a safer home in another city. Northern says the mayor and Birmingham Police Department officials are aware of the idea, and all are cool with adding it to the pot. The pot that may, just may, entice someone to come forth with information that may solve a crime involving the shooting—or murder— of a child.
“The goal is to relocate someone out of their current situation to a better situation, to another city,” Northern says. “People look at us as the problem; we want to be part of the solution.” Here’s praying it’s enough. It just may be.