City hall in Montomery, Alabama on Sept. 20, 2024. Montgomery city officials earlier this month approved an ordinance requiring those carrying concealed firearms to have photo identification. The attorney general’s office said the move violates state law. (Brian Lyman/Alabama Reflector)
Back in July, I wrote about a prefiled bill that would allow the governor and attorney general to appoint interim police chiefs for cities, effectively allowing the state to take over their police departments.
The bill from Sen. Will Barfoot, R-Pike Road, doesn’t name Montgomery explicitly. But lawmakers have signaled that’s who they have in mind .
At the time, I thought this meant state officials would take ownership of all the issues of crime and law enforcement staffing that many cities are struggling with, a responsibility they may not want.
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I still think that. But as was pointed out to me after the column ran, a greater danger is that two white officials — one from Wilcox County (roughly 75 miles from Montgomery) and one from Marshall County (164 miles away) — could measure progress simply by ramping up the volume of arrests in a majority-Black city, without any sense of whether those arrests are actually warranted or effective.