Crime is a Crime is a Crime
A recent search for the top 100 cities in America for crime produced Bessemer AL as #1. I’m not surprised.
In between college graduations a week apart in Atlanta, my mother and I took a three-city tour of Montgomery, Selma, and Birmingham. The first thing I noticed as we pulled into Birmingham was the number of billboards advertising bail bondsmen. One sat directly across from the police station I visited and while waiting to see the police chief, in walked a young Black couple. Standing there in military uniform, they were trying to address the husband’s warrant. In Birmingham, you’re not even safe serving while Black.
The next day was the funeral of one of my board member’s brother in Bessemer AL, a 20 minute drive from Birmingham. Consistent with the plethora of billboards for bailbondsmen, I couldn’t help but notice the inordinate number of payday loan companies that lined both sides of a very long road that led back to Birmingham. Block after block, payday loan companies flanked both sides of the street, sometimes two sitting side by side. They seemed to be the financial footing for each of the new strip malls they achored.
Having had a client years ago who had exhausted the few payday loan companies that existed in St. Louis, every payday she would complete her rounds in St. Louis then head to Kansas City where she paid on her weekly “dues” there…
