BIRMINGHAM, Ala. — Birmingham has graduated the largest police academy class in its history, a milestone city leaders say is part of a broader push to pull the city back from record-setting violence in the years after the George Floyd protests and the height of the Black Lives Matter movement.
The Birmingham Police Department celebrated 89 new officers at a Friday ceremony, describing the group as the biggest police officer graduation class the department has ever had. Reports identified the group as Class 128 and noted that Chief Scott Thurmond’s successor, Chief Allen T. Pickett, has overseen the hiring of nearly 300 officers over the past year as the city tries to rebuild its ranks.
The historic graduation comes less than a year after Birmingham surpassed its all-time homicide record, a grim marker that underscored how far the city had drifted from the calls for reform and accountability that surged nationwide after George Floyd’s murder in 2020. Birmingham recorded 160 homicides in 2024, exceeding a recent high of 153 in 2022 and matching or surpassing the historic peak of 148 killings set in 1933, giving the city a homicide rate of more than 80 per 100,000 residents.
But in 2025, the trend has sharply reversed. In the first five months of the year, Birmingham homicides dropped by about half compared to the same period in 2024, falling from 61 to 33, according to Birmingham Police Department data presented to the City Council and analyzed by local watchdog outlet BirminghamWatch. Another midyear review found that overall crime in the first half of 2025 was up 7.6 percent compared with 2024, but homicides fell by more than 50 percent, from 76 to 37, even as violent crime rose modestly and property crime jumped.
City officials have linked the decline to both stepped-up enforcement and new community-focused initiatives that grew out of years of public pressure for change. In response to 2024’s devastating homicide toll, Mayor Randall Woodfin convened a Birmingham Crime Commission that produced 82 recommendations in January ranging from targeted policing strategies to expanded social services and violence interruption efforts, with dozens of those recommendations moving into planning or implementation by spring.
Those efforts reflect a complicated balance in a city that saw large Black Lives Matter marches and protests in 2020 demanding accountability for police abuses while also grappling with some of the highest murder rates in the country. Advocacy groups and city leaders have tried to thread the needle by calling for both civil rights protections and more effective, constitutional policing — a posture that has sometimes put progressive residents at odds with national narratives that frame public safety debates as a choice between “backing the blue” and supporting police reform.
Local analysts say Birmingham’s spike in killings after 2018 mirrored national trends in gun violence but hit especially hard in a city with shrinking population and concentrated poverty. From a recent low of 62 homicides in 2014, Birmingham’s killings climbed steadily, reaching 144 in 2022, dipping slightly to 135 in 2023, then surging to around 148–160 in 2024 depending on the count, making last year one of the deadliest on record.
The newest class of officers joins the force at a time when the department is under pressure to show that adding more police does not mean abandoning hard-won reforms. BPD has emphasized recruitment of diverse candidates and says many of the new officers view policing as a vocation rooted in service rather than a reaction to 2020-era backlash, with one recruit telling WVTM 13 that Birmingham is “one of the biggest, one of the best” departments in Alabama with strong opportunities for advancement.
City leaders have repeatedly said that enforcement alone will not solve Birmingham’s violence problem. The homicide decline so far in 2025 has unfolded alongside expanded community safety programs, gun violence awareness campaigns, and partnerships with neighborhood groups and nonprofits, which officials say are designed to address the underlying trauma and instability that fuel shootings.
Even with this year’s progress, experts caution that one strong year does not erase a decade of rising violence. But the combination of a record-breaking police academy class, a detailed reform roadmap and early signs of sustained reductions in killings has given Birmingham an opening to redefine public safety after the turmoil of the George Floyd era — not by turning away from demands for justice, advocates say, but by trying to build a city where fewer residents end up on either side of the crime tape.