1 Place tells council domestic violence is a public-safety crisis; urges coordinated response

Rebecca McWilliams, executive director of 1 Place Metro Alabama Family Justice Center, told the Birmingham City Council that domestic violence in Birmingham and Jefferson County has reached “a public health and public safety crisis” and urged a coordinated community response to help survivors and hold offenders accountable.

McWilliams said agencies that work together under one roof at 1 Place help survivors navigate the justice and support systems, but stressed the scale of the problem: Birmingham-area law enforcement and courts collectively handle thousands of domestic-violence calls each year and the city is seeing hundreds of strangulation cases that are the strongest predictors of future homicide.

Why it matters: Council members heard detail-level statistics and program descriptions that illustrate how domestic violence reaches beyond private households into criminal justice and public-safety workloads. The presentation framed domestic violence as both an immediate lifesafety threat and a driver of broader community violence, and it included program and policy items the council and partner agencies could further support.

McWilliams told the council that the…