As Birmingham police grapple with a severe shortage of officers, old wounds are reopening for the family of Sgt. Wytasha Carter. His widow and father now believe a lack of manpower and training contributed to the officer’s death.

Sgt. Carter and another officer were shot on January 13, 2019. Carter was shot in the head and did not survive. The second officer was seriously injured

Former police chief Patrick Smith said at the time: “It appears the officers were unable to respond, taken completely by surprise.” The suspect pleaded guilty to murder and is now serving life without parole. The family was initially told Sgt. Carter was called up to assist as a backup.

“We are owed the truth, at least give us this. Here we are almost six years later finding out the truth; it opens the wounds,” explained Carter’s widow Tiphanie.

The truth she tells has been revealed in recent reports about staff shortages. The family learned that officers were conducting an undercover operation that night after a rash of car break-ins in the city’s north side.

Sgt. Carter asked his supervisor to stop, feeling there were not enough officers on duty that night to work safely. But they were ordered to continue, according to the family.

“If things had been handled differently with manpower and scheduling, he would be here today,” noted Tiphanie Carter. She told us that her husband worked until 9 am and then returned to work until 1 pm. “He came home and slept maybe two hours,” Carter said.

The family says the body camera video also revealed training issues. The situation was already spiraling out of control when Sgt. Carter has arrived. He had control of one of the suspects while the other two officers had the other suspect.

“The other sergeant didn’t have handcuffs on and when he went back to get the handcuffs, that gave the guy the opportunity,” Carter explained. It was the opportunity I believe for the suspect to take a gun from his pocket and fire shots.

“Proper training would never have allowed this to happen. It was a failure that night,” explained Wytasha’s father, Ronald Carter.

He told us his son left Fairfield PD for Birmingham PD where he would have good training and support. At that time Birmingham’s force exceeded a thousand officers.

Over the years, positions have been cut and positions have gone unfilled. The force was short 118 officers in 2019year Sgt. Carter was killed. By 2022, the department is down 168 positions. In 2023, the numbers rose to 234 vacancies. For 2024, there is 223 sworn officer posts unfilled.

“There are officers who refuse to come to Birmingham because of what happened to my son. They keep putting a band-aid on a wound,” noted Ronald Carter.

ABC 33/40 News spoke with officers who spent more than a decade with Birmingham PD now working at other departments. Each cited labor shortages, grueling shifts answering 17 calls a day and concerns about personal safety and mental health as reasons to leave.

There are also complaints that Birmingham Mayor Randall Woodfin is trying to run the police department from City Hall by handcuffing the chief.

One called it an amazing job when it started, then said “for the number of calls Birmingham gets, they’re killing their officers.”

Sgt. Carter’s widow remembers his last words about the body camera. “After he said stop playing, we have families to get home to, you never heard my husband’s voice. Those were his last words,” Carter recalled. His father says those words haunt him to this day.

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Birmingham police declined to answer any of the Carter family’s questions.

ABC 33/40 News has requested to review body camera footage and witness statements from the State Bureau of Investigation. The Carter family had no objection to us reviewing the material.

ABC 33/40 News received this written response from the SBI:

The Alabama Law Enforcement Agency considers body camera footage, crime scene photos, investigative reports, field notes, witness statements, and other investigative writings or records to be investigative material, so we would not be able to provide them.

Sgt. Carter would have turned fifty in November. Carter was a husband, father of two and a veteran.