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Birmingham police chief urges multiagency approach, pilots discreet resources for domestic‑violence victims
Summary
Chief Michael Pickett said enforcement alone cannot end domestic violence and described convening prosecutors and victim centers, redesigning case cards to share discreet resources and increasing officer training; he used a recent indictment and a cited risk statistic to underscore the stakes.
Chief Michael Pickett, chief of police for Birmingham, Alabama, told a Legal Services Corporation forum that while his department reduced overall violent crime, domestic violence remains a persistent driver of harm and requires coordinated responses beyond arrest.
"We cannot arrest our way out of this problem," Pickett said, describing a 2024 period the department called its deadliest year and noting a 45% reduction in overall crime in 2025 while domestic violence continued to present a major challenge. He said he convened the city attorney, the district attorney, a local victim center and the U.S. Attorney's office to "talk about what can we do from the enforcement end to help streamline things" and improve how first responders connect survivors to resources.
Pickett said the department redesigned case cards used at incident responses to include a code or discreet ways to provide resources so that information is not visibly handed to victims where an abuser might see it. "We just want to implement a code ... to get information and resources to those individuals in a discreet manner," he said, and described ongoing officer training to improve awareness of referral options.
To illustrate the stakes, Pickett recounted a recent indictment out of Birmingham involving a driver running over a partner with a child in the car; he used the example to underscore the possible consequences when families lack supports. In his remarks the chief cited a statistic about strangulation risk that appeared in the transcript as both "700 times more likely" and "700% more likely"; the forum record did not include a clarifying citation for that numeric claim.
Pickett framed the department's role as convenor and partner rather than sole solver: the initiatives he described are intended to speed referrals, protect victims discreetly at the point of contact and reduce reoffending through improved communication with prosecutors and victim service providers. He did not announce a formal new policy or funding allocation at the forum.
The forum ended with panelists calling for sustained funding for legal services and cross‑sector partnerships to improve survivor safety.
