Ivy wants Birmingham to repeat the Special Montgomery Crime Group: Will it happen? – al.com

Alabama Governor Kay Ivy said he believes that a working group for a crime active in Montgomery can be reproduced in Jefferson County to help fight the problem of crime in Birmingham.

Ivy said in his state address as a week that he wants to expand a Montgomery Crime Division as part of the effort to destroy crime across the country. This weekend, she told WSFA that she wanted a similar unit in Birmingham.

“We certainly need one in Birmingham,” Ivy told the station. “They reached their 90-year-old brand in arms violence.”

Birmingham ended 2024 with 152 murders, its most large number of violent deaths in one year since 1933. The city has 13 murders this year. Jefferson has 20 murders in 2025 throughout the County.

The Montgomery Metro Crime Division, known as MACS, started in June 2024 to cope with the jump of violence in and around Montgomery.

MACS was composed of law enforcement officers, Alabama General Prosecutor’s Office, Montgomery Police Department, Montgomery Sheriff’s Sheriff and Alcohol Bureau, Tobacco, Fire Weapons and Explosives.

Ivy’s spokesman, Gina Mayola, told Al.com on Monday that the governor “believes that Birmingham can take advantage of the Crime for Crime in the Metro Crime, which he created here in Montgomery.”

“Cities across the country are struggling with increasing the challenges of public safety and our urban areas are not immunized. This is one of the reasons why governor Ivy makes a great impetus to pass this exhaustive public safety package to this session, which will help to restore blue and fighting violence to the city pistol, “Mayola said.

After last week at the state address, the law enforcement secretary of Alabama Hal Taylor told reporters that he was talking to Birmingham Mayor Randal Woodfin about the MACS department in Jefferson. Taylor said he could extract from the many municipal police departments in the county.

Rick traveler, a spokesman for the city of Birmingham, on Monday, said the city was grateful for the work that the Alabama Response Agency was doing with Birmingham.

“We are certainly open to more conversations related to cooperation, much in the way we partner with the sheriff of Jefferson County Mark Pettoui and his department and our federal law enforcement partners,” the traveler said.

“As stated at the press conference today on Glock switches, we are committed to showing a united front in the fight against the violent crime.”