Bullets had already punctured the porch steps of Mel Aaron’s home in the East Lake neighborhood of Birmingham, Ala., one of the nation's most violent cities. They had broken two windows. Once, they had narrowly darted past her teenage son’s head as he stood in the living room, again startled by the loud pops of a drive-by shooting. Aaron was optimistic about the city’s new strategy to stem its escalating gun violence: placing large, yellow concrete barriers around East Lake, blocking traffic and preventing drive-by shooters and getaway cars from entering. After six months, the barriers show just how hard it is to make a neighborhood feel safer — let alone be safer — and have become a symbol of Birmingham’s cycle of grief, outrage and, often, futility in the fight against gun violence, the New York Times reports.
“The thing about barriers, bullets can fly over them,” said Annie Pearl, 80, who lives in the neighborhood of about 2,100 residents and is considering leaving her house because she cannot stand to look at “those ugly, yellow things.” Some residents praised how the initiative — which also placed more stop signs and speed bumps on some streets — had reduced speeding and said they felt safer with them. Many others, said they did not believe the barriers were effective in preventing shootings. They said their commutes were now several minutes longer because the barriers had closed off 19 streets and alleys to traffic. Birmingham had151 homicides last year, breaking its record set in 1933 and bucking a nationwide trend of murder rates declining over the past two years. Struggling schools, high levels of poverty and unemployment have persisted in Birmingham, creating ripe conditions for violent crime. Other factors have hurt the city, including police staffing shortages and Alabama’s permissive gun laws.
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