City Hall () - Mayor Larry Langford is moving forward with his plans to fight crime in Birmingham's inner city neighborhoods. Seeking to build on Richard Arrington's legacy of crime fighting, Langford will march from city hall to the Jefferson County courthouse in an act of penance and reconciliation. His normal dapper attire will be replaced by a burlap sack, his normally clear skin and flawless hair by a layer of ash.

"We can't just sit here and think about what to do about the crime problem," said Langford. "We have to act now to avoid a burlap gap." The mayor is referring to an elegant plan devised by officials in Philadelphia, PA in which churches were given burlap sacks to hand out to parishioners. The operation made the city almost impervious to crime since criminals would have to be mad to attack someone wearing a burlap sack.

Another part of the operation called for citizens to sit in ashes to further lessen the possibility of crime. Langford has modified the plan somewhat for Birmingham, calling for citizens to put ash on their faces. "I want them to be able to move about and not just sit in ashes all day," said Langford. "Of course the criminals who want to repent should sit in piles of ashes. If they would wear sacks of black goat hair, that would also help us pick them out in a crowd."

This latest blitz by Langford comes after several other gap avoiding initiatives have proven to be so effective. After learning that Madison, WI was using beet juice instead of salt on icy winter roads, Langford ordered the public works department to begin doing the same thing. During this past winter, crime in Birmingham was down by 20% over the previous summer. Based upon the low crime rate in Akron, OH, Langford told the police department to purchase soap box derby cars for the entire force. When informed that these cars only ran downhill, Langford modified the order to only include the North Precinct.

When asked if he didn't think that some planning and research were necessary in order to create viable solutions to the crime problem, Lankford replied "I didn't move into this city just to sit in my loft and watch the crime go by while speaking to a bust of Caesar."