By Daniel Schmidt

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MONTGOMERY, Alabama — The sound of gunfire on Chuck Mann’s security camera footage was incessant. After nearly 41 seconds of continuous shooting, 22-year-old Joshua Thomas lay dead in a strip mall parking lot in the 6100 block of Atlanta Highway, and an unnamed teenage girl was also injured. At the scene of the brazen shootout, 275 casings fired from 17 separate firearms were recovered — just another day in the office.

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Like many other American cities, Montgomery, or “The Gump” as its roughly 200,000 residents call it, has not been spared a meteoric rise in homicides in the four years since the pandemic upended hundreds of millions of lives and briefly wiped away the veneer of societal normality.

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While nobody exactly knows how things became so bad, they all have their theories.

However, in a town whose identity includes being both the birthplace of the Civil Rights movement and the cradle of the Confederacy, none of that matters. All that matters is more people — predominantly young Black men — continue to fill Montgomery’s cemeteries with more gravestones and Alabama’s notorious prisons with more inmates.

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Crime data reveals Montgomery averaged 31.8 homicides annually in the late 2000s. Since 2020, it has averaged 68.7, a 116% increase despite the city experiencing a slight population decline over the past two decades. While there have been lulls and intensifications over the years, data shows murders, which are primarily committed with firearms, trending conspicuously upward.

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Metropolises such as Philadelphia and Portland, Oregon, have broken decades-old yearly homicide records. Towns not typically thought of when it comes to gun violence such as Tucson, Arizona, and St. Paul, Minnesota, have not been spared either.

Data also reveals violent deaths across the United States are the highest they have been since 2001, and gun deaths have become the leading cause of death in children 18 and younger, overtaking motor vehicle accidents in 2020.

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While the nationwide murder rate has still not come close to reaching the lofty peaks recorded in the 1970s, 80s and 90s, pockets of unprecedented violence in various mid-sized and major American cities have become a problem. In some cases, even a full-blown crisis.

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Cities just like Montgomery.

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Desperate to break the cycle of violence, officials and citizens alike have utilized nearly every available option to curb a murder rate beginning to spiral out of control. Gun buyback programs have been advertised on local television stations. Four police chiefs have come and gone since 2009. Nearly $30,000 was awarded through Alabama’s Project Safe Neighborhoods program in 2020 for gunshot detection equipment. Anti-violence activists have organized rallies railing against a seemingly hopeless situation.

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Yet despite those efforts, bullets continue to fly, and bodies continue to pile up. While the future is not written in stone, Montgomery is projected to experience upward of 104 homicides in 2023, 27 more than the previous high of 77 set just two years prior — a record-breaking increase equivalent to an entire year’s worth of death just 17 years ago.

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While most deaths are unceremoniously glossed over on the nightly news or in local newspapers, others garner more attention. High-profile killings such as the assassination of local rapper Doe B in 2013 and the accidental shooting of 13-year-old Ceyeria Lee in 2020 are but two examples of tragedies that should have galvanized change yet failed to do so.

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It never used to be quite like this.

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Faith on the front lines

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For decades, the epicenter of Montgomery’s grassroots anti-violence movement has been Freewill Missionary Baptist Church, located just across I-65 from the city’s Garden District.

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The church languished for decades much like the movement, trapped in a brick building so small it could not hold more than several dozen parishioners at a time. Both Freewill and the local anti-violence movement were in need of fresh blood.

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They both would receive exactly what they needed on a fateful day in the early 1990s.

Forced from the church’s pulpit in 2020 by heart and kidney issues that doctors said would take his life within a year after first being diagnosed in 2017, longtime pastor Ed Nettles has seen it all. After beginning his ministry at Freewill on Feb. 22, 1992, Nettles jumped feet-first into the local anti-violence movement after he realized how entrenched bloodshed and drug dealing were in the surrounding neighborhoods.

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It is a role that has turned him into an institution of sorts. Recognizable to almost anyone in Montgomery through word of mouth passed down by generations of gang members, residents and city officials alike, Nettles has earned virtually unparalleled street cred after having close calls himself and witnessing suffering for nearly 33 years.

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There was the time when he witnessed firsthand an ambush executed by several men who rolled a vehicle into the street as a roadblock and left their target slumped over his steering wheel as he drove past Freewill Missionary, riddled with bullet holes and without a chance of survival.

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Years later, he was called to a house where a resident was discovered having bled out on his couch with his stomach blown apart after a burglar armed with a shotgun mercilessly entered his home.

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The most terrifying of all was when he was summoned alone to a group of abandoned houses in the dead of night by gang members who completely surrounded him as he begged them not to retaliate.

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“I was like, ‘Lord, help me,’” said Nettles, whose otherwise soothing, baritone voice contained a hint of re-lived fear.

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His is a unique perspective. With all those years under his belt, Nettles innately knows how violence has ebbed and flowed and changed with the times. It is as if he were a walking, breathing time capsule.

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In the past, there was a perverse sense of honor. Gangsters from Kim Hill to Trenholm Court adhered to a universal street code to prevent collateral damage. As Nettles described it, there was “discipline” to not shoot into occupied dwellings and around churches, schools and children, a universal understanding that if you operated by the code, nothing unfortunate would happen.

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That is no longer the case.

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Older members who once ran the streets have long been run off by younger upstarts looking to make a name for themselves and who operate without those antiquated principles. Add in the desperation to escape underserved communities in a city where just over 1 in 5 residents live under the poverty line and the situation becomes volatile.

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“Some of these teenagers, 13, 14, 15, 16-year-olds up to about 24 [or] 25, some of them have taken on the role as the head of the home or the man in the home to provide where their mothers lack,” Nettles explained. “[Parents] lose a lot of children, those that participate in that behavior, and for me, it has been hard over these 33 years to look at a parent and at the same time eulogize during a time when I have the knowledge that you knew what your child was doing, and you took advantage of it.”

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However, even the shadow of death does not perturb them. Neither does the threat of prison.

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In a world where nothing is given and everything is earned — or taken — risks are seen as just another part of the game. Dying simply means their worries fade away, and the cold concrete walls and rusted iron bars of a prison cell are the gateway to a reunion complete with blunts, liquor and Facebook Live with guys they already know.

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Such coldly calculated nihilism only makes the job of those trying to prevent such tragedies that much more difficult when they are already fighting an uphill battle.

“How do you deal with a mindset [of] I'm not afraid to die, only God can judge me, and I'm not afraid to go to prison?” Nettles lamented. “How do you deal with a mindset that says either way, I'm fine?”

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Throw firearms into the mix and it is like adding water to a grease fire.

In the late 1980s and early 1990s, most that could be found on the streets were .25 ACPs and the occasional chrome .44 someone stole from their grandfather. There were almost never any larger-caliber pistols or high-powered rifles.

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“The streets are flooded. I mean they are absolutely flooded. Back then, yeah, I could buy a little handgun off the street for about $20 or $25, but it was hard to get it to you. It wasn't an easy process like it is today,” Nettles claimed. “Today, I can just open up the trunk and you give me what I want, and I'll give you the money. It's over with, and nobody's gonna trace the sale.”

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With that tsunami of firearms comes trauma virtually impossible to quantify, though researchers try their best.

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Should someone manage to survive a shooting completely unscathed, studies suggest roughly 20% of all survivors are afflicted by posttraumatic stress disorder, and 71% of gunshot survivors develop the condition.

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Caught between a rock and a hard place, it can all become too much to bear.

“I'm willing to put some money on it that a lot of these kids walk around not only traumatized, but with PTSD from all the gunshots and the violence in the neighborhood, and not being able to sleep wondering if the bullet's gonna be coming into their home,” Nettles said.

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While Nettles can offer insight into the long-term trajectory of gun violence in the city, he is but one side of the coin. And in the streets of Montgomery, only someone who has lived a life of crime can testify to how they got to that point themselves.

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The descent into a life of crime

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Lonnie Smith will never forget his first come-up. A military brat, he knew how to sneak onto Maxwell Air Force Base and rob the arcade machines in the game room. After an audacious raid by Smith and his best friend at the time, they had more than $275 worth of quarters apiece.

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His friend immediately wanted to go to the mall and buy some black and white Air Jordan Flights with the strap across the top. Smith was more disciplined.

After watching other kids and older guys in his neighborhood shoot dice and smoke weed on the corner in his neighborhood, he saw a business opportunity. So he took some of those quarters and bought a half ounce of marijuana to make more money.

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He never intended to go down this path. His biological father was out of the picture, and his mom and stepdad had just divorced. Money was tight and times were getting desperate.

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“My mama [was] working and she ain't really making no money. Bills and stuff wasn't getting paid, water getting cut out. Kids [were] joking because they realized that I'm wearing the same pants and shirt twice a week,” Smith exclaimed, throwing his hands up from the steering wheel of his burgundy Chevy Silverado 2500 as he sped down Montgomery’s East South Boulevard. “So from that point man, I said, ‘Wait a minute, I need to get out of here, I need to get out of this situation.’ You know, how can I help my mother pay these bills?”

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Thirty-five years later and money is no longer an issue for Smith and his family. Now a father of two and grandfather of four, he owns a trucking company, restaurant and several rental properties with his older brother and mother. On this particular day, his biggest problem was only a busted sink pipe in the back of Mudears Kitchen and the dark brown grease that stained his jeans.

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Possessing an average stature and build, a salt and pepper goatee and a quintessential Southern drawl with a quick wit to match, one probably would not guess he used to traffic kilos of cocaine around the streets of Montgomery. The only giveaway could be the two gold teeth in the upper half of his mouth.

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While his origin story played out in the late 1980s and 1990s, an untold number just like it are occurring in real time, causing the city’s homicide rate to soar. Despite now being old enough to be many current gang members’ grandfather, Smith’s life is a case study on how someone could turn to a life of crime.

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All it takes is a little desperation and opportunity.

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Born in Montgomery, Smith and his family moved to Germany not long after his mother got remarried to an airman. Growing up in Central Europe, things were great. They were always provided for, and while they did not have a lot, it was always enough.

Yet six years after leaving his childhood home, his mother’s second marriage failed, and they found themselves back in Montgomery in a precarious situation.

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They rented a duplex with walls so paper-thin Smith could hear the next-door neighbors’ every conversation. His mother began working long hours at a gas station that paid so little they could never keep up, much less get ahead. By the time Smith turned 12, that desperation had set in.

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There were also plenty of opportunities along the way. First came the dime bags of weed. Later he and his friend invested in two keys — one grey and one navy blue — that gave them access to virtually every vending machine and its change in town. Eventually, they bought a little cocaine to turn into crack as the drug began sweeping through their neighborhood like wildfire. It was a natural progression as they followed the money.

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Then came the dealers from Miami.

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Smith’s older brother and his friends somehow got hooked up with a crew out of South Florida, and they were in town visiting. With them were nine ounces of pure cocaine. Smith and his friend received a sweetheart deal: the dealers only wanted $1,000 per ounce. By cutting it with water and baking soda, Smith figured they could net themselves roughly $14,000. It was life-changing money for a kid tired of watching his mother struggle.

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Things then quickly spiraled out of control. Ounces became kilos. He was pushing serious weight and making a name for himself. Despite just hitting puberty, he was already a bona fide kingpin.

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Smith was on a tear that would only be interrupted when he was pulled over by a detective, D.T. Marshall, hellbent on ending a feud he had with his friend. They had both gone to the home of a man who owed his friend money after being fronted cocaine. As they collected the cash and sped off, the pair was ambushed by Marshall and his fellow officers.

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Desperate to avoid drug possession charges, Smith quickly ate the pre-packaged baggies of cocaine stuffed in the center console of the car. By the time he found himself in booking, he was foaming at the mouth and so delirious he was unable to be fingerprinted.

According to Smith, he died twice inside his cell that night. His teenage heart raced and gave out multiple times, unable to handle the sheer volume of drugs that saturated his blood. He briefly saw heaven and resorted to counting the number of bricks in the walls to stay tethered to this world.

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Doctors who saw him after being released from jail were shocked he survived. It became a wake-up call of sorts with a recovery period that lasted two months. He and his friend would ultimately go their separate ways after the incident. And yet he still could not get enough of fast drug money and the lifestyle it financed.

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The conversation then became a conspiratorial rant that lasted well over half an hour as he continued to drive around Montgomery collecting supplies to fix that busted pipe at Mudears.

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As he grabbed a section of pipe from his house, Smith decided to take a trip down memory lane. The restaurant was closing soon anyways, and there was another sink in the adjacent Subway they could use to clean that day’s dishes.

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He drove slowly throughout the neighborhood surrounding Carver High School, waving at residents talking out in the front yard with their neighbors and the occasional porch sitter.

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“I just like to go check things out every once in a while,” Smith said as he turned down a mostly abandoned side street.

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Lining the narrow streets in desperate need of repaving sat tired old houses on cinder blocks with mottled paint. While most appeared to be lived in, a sizeable number were boarded up and assumedly empty.

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The whole neighborhood seemed like a faded dream had long ago by someone desperately trying to forget it, abandoned and condemned by both government and love. It was the perfect metaphor to show an outsider.

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While it is easy to see the core causes of worsening violence, solving them is much more difficult. When asked what initiatives he would implement to solve the crisis if given absolute authority, Smith slowly shook his head and then offered his insight.

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“First of all man, I don't think nobody could be controlling this shit. I think it's a team effort. I think it's just really starting back with the basis: having real conversations about what's really going on, what's really important to you,” he said. “You know, stop living the lies.”

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As he merged southbound onto I-65 from Exit 170, Smith reflected on his journey to this point. It was long and tiring and filled with twists and turns and betrayals and heartbreak. He had been trapped in an impossible situation for so long and needed a dramatic change to break free.

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He wanted a fresh start by any means necessary.

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“I prayed and asked God to send me to prison because I couldn't get out of this situation on my own. I had created a person that wasn't me just to survive in an environment, trying to get back to the environment that I was meant to be in. And I lost myself,” Smith recalled, later claiming he was arrested on a drug charge a week after he was caught by police at the wrong place at the wrong time. “I said, 'Look at God.' Guess what: I wasn't arrested, I was rescued from myself. And when I got out of prison, I was a different man. I was me. I found myself. I caught up to myself. I was able to be myself.”

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While not everyone sees going to prison as a necessity as Smith did, stories like his are occurring both in Montgomery and across the United States. And until those underlying issues that cause young men to pick up guns are addressed, trying to solve this uniquely American problem while only focused on guns may be a losing proposition.