The national conversation about crime is being driven by rhetorical attacks – and national guard call-ups – by Donald Trump, who routinely demonizes places like Chicago, Washington DC, Portland and even New York City, which has a lower homicide rate than Orlando, Florida, home to Disneyland.

Birmingham’s murder rate in 2024 was higher than all but one large city – St Louis – in 2024. About 195,000 people live in Birmingham. During the first 286 days of 2024, Birmingham tallied 132 murders, an annualized rate of 86.3 per 100,000 residents. The national average is 5 per 100,000.

Yet, over the same period this year, Birmingham recorded 63 murders, fewer than half as many killings as in 2024 with nary a national guard soldier in sight.

Crime goes up – and down – for many reasons. Like Baltimore and many other large cities in the US today, murder in Birmingham is waning. Local observers attribute some of the change to a reversal of the social dynamics that led to a spike in violence during the pandemic. Some point to the work of a revitalized police department with new leadership, and to the work of the city’s new, robust violence intervention program.

Violence in the US tends to concentrate among poor and marginalized people. Criminologists look at clusters of poverty as nodes for crime. But they may not have had Damien McDaniel in mind.

One year ago this week, Birmingham police arrested McDaniel and ultimately charged him with committing 18 murders over a 14-month period, including two mass shootings that together left eight people dead and dozens injured. State and federal prosecutors accuse McDaniel of being a drug gang enforcer and paid assassin with no real connection to the people he killed.

The proportion of violence implicit in McDaniel’s charges has little precedent in a city of Birmingham’s size. Of the city’s 138 murders in 2024, McDaniel is charged in 11 of them – or about one out of every 12 homicides. The start of Birmingham’s sharply declining homicide rate begins the week police arrested McDaniel and his eight co-defendants a year ago.

It’s probably a mistake to say that one arrest has solved Birmingham’s crime problem. Most of the time, big double-digit reductions in homicide rates come with a similar improvement in aggravated assault rates. Not so with Birmingham. Year-to-date on 13 October, the city’s aggravated assault rate has only fallen by 1.4%, compared with a 52.3% decrease in homicides.

Birmingham recorded half as many deaths from roughly the same number of shootings this year. Fewer people are being shot dead, but people are still regularly getting shot. Perhaps this is why for many of the Magic City residents, despite the McDaniel arrest, a lower murder rate doesn’t feel different, yet.

Maurice Allen talked about getting shot one day in Birmingham like it was weather.