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Several residents were in unison to the Selma City Council Tuesday night about the consistent shots that were fired and heard at night within the city.

Several streets within the City of Selma are pitch dark with hardly any visible light, leaving communities unsafe and a risk for more gun violence activity, theft or harm to an innocent bystander, according to the citizens within the council meeting.

Lighting

“The main thing I want to talk about is the lighting within my block in the 600 hundred block of Lapley street,” said Former Dallas County District Judge Nathaniel Walker. “Those lights have been out since the tornado. It’s dark over there. It’s nothing but a setup for somebody to come along and seriously injure, rob or rape. If it was in your neighborhood, city council members or the mayor’s neighborhood or the vice president’s neighborhood, you all would do something about it.”

Walker said he encourages members of the council to go over to Lapsley street after the sun is down, preferably around 7 p.m. to truly see how dark the community is.

“I can stand on my front porch, and I can’t even see across the street,” Walker said. “The vanity lights and all those are out, and I have talked to my neighbors about it and they all know I’m here.”

Gunfire

Walker also touched on the importance of the City of Selma bringing a halt to all of the gun violence happening around the city.

“The city of Selma really needs to do something about the gun violence in Selma involving the shootings because it distracts from the ambience of our community,” Walker said. “I get tired of waking up at 1 to 2 o’clock in the morning and hearing these automatic weapons go off in my neighborhood. I hear it all the time, it’s frightening and when I call the police, they say I’m the only one who calls.”

Walker said he continues to call authorities anyway to bring continuous awareness to what is going on within the city and suggests the Selma Police to buy spot shadow technology that is within other cities to allow them to know exactly where the shots are coming from.

Walker even told the council and chief Fulford that there also needs to be more officers on the streets at night as well.

“I had my grandson up in New York with me when I was living up there back in ‘17 and ‘18 and we grew up there and I had him up there for a month and he woke me up when I lived in Harlem on 120th street between Fredrick Douglas Boulevard, and he told me, ‘grandad you know something? We’ve been here almost three weeks and we haven’t heard a single gunshot.’”

Walker said when his grandson lived on the far end of Selma Avenue, shots were fired all the time and people still said they don’t know where they are coming from, but he believes that somebody does and that somebody can do something about it.

Walker said the frequent shootings are not only happening on the 600 Block of Lapsley Street in Selma or on Selma Avenue but also in the neighborhoods of GWC.

Walker urges the council members to help out and find solutions to make the city of Selma safe again. 

Within the council’s meeting, several items were set for discussion and the approval of the council including the allocation of funds for the 2025 CADCA National Leadership forum to the releasing of settlement information from SPIRE and AMIC (City of Selma Insurance) incident at the Selma Convention Center. 

The next city council meeting is Tuesday, Nov. 26.