Montgomery City Council Members Raise Concerns Over Fewer Police Patrols In Neighborhoods, Summer Crime
MONTGOMERY, Ala. (WAKA) — A shortage of several hundred Montgomery police officers remains a pressing concern for city council members, especially during the summer months.
Several council members we spoke with at Tuesday night’s city council meeting, voiced frustrations over the impact the shortage is having on neighborhood safety and discussed potential solutions.
District 8 Councilman Glen Pruitt said the lack of police visibility in neighborhoods is directly tied to understaffing.
“We are not seeing the patrols in the neighborhoods because we don’t have them,” Pruitt said. “The officers that we have today are great people, right? They are doing everything they can do, but we are not providing what we should provide for the people (who live in Montgomery), and the men and women in blue that work for us, they’re overworked. They’re tired. That’s why some of them are actually leaving to go to another municipality to do the exact same job.”
Historically, crime increases in Montgomery during the summer months. Until recently, council members like District 6’s Oronde Mitchell addressed this by hiring off-duty officers to patrol neighborhoods with higher crime rates.
“We were able to hire off-duty police officers for four hours, and I was able to get maybe three or four officers at one time in one specific neighborhood, and they were able to ride all around. Just their presence deterred a lot of stuff in those neighborhoods,” Mitchell said.
However, due to a recent Montgomery Police Department policy change, off-duty officers can no longer use their police vehicles for these patrols because of liability concerns. As a result, Mitchell is now seeking private security.
“The only thing I want is for them to be the eyes. I don’t want them to try to stop anybody,” Mitchell said. “I just want them to, if they see something, call 911 or report it. It is so that we can kind of get a grip of the situation that’s going on in particular neighborhoods that I’m having issues with during this summertime. Some of the things that citizens are worried about is property crime. You know, we have had a lot of break-ins at some of the apartment complexes (in my district) and you’re not talking about one or two cars, you’re talking about 15 to 20 cars in one night, so if we can kind of alleviate some of those things that we’re seeing, it would help.”
Pruitt also said he has hired a private security company for certain neighborhoods in District 8.
“There was a shooting on a Wednesday night. A bullet went through the house into the bathroom, and a mother and daughter were in her bedroom laying down. They called 911, no one showed up, and now we are hiring a private security company to ride around the neighborhood at night, for like 27 nights, over the next couple of months,” he said.
At a public safety committee meeting earlier Tuesday, Pruitt proposed hiring 40 to 60 Montgomery County sheriff’s deputies to patrol within city limits.
“We’d hire them, we’d give them the money, and they would still work directly for Sheriff Derrick Cunningham,” Pruitt said. “Montgomery County Commission Chairman Doug Singleton had committed that if we paid the salaries, they would pay the benefits and the retirement. All we had to do was pay the salaries, but we had to give a guarantee for 2 to 3 years so they wouldn’t get stuck with a bunch of overhead. I have no problem with that because every year we budget for more than 400 officers, and yet we have nowhere near that, so there is money in the budget. We all know this, so the money is there.”
The proposal failed to make it out of committee. Other council members opposed it, saying the city should continue focusing on recruiting for the Montgomery Police Department.
“We need to try to reach as far as New York or New Jersey or California,” Mitchell said. “We could bring some of those (law enforcement) individuals here because Montgomery is thriving. It’s good for somebody that’s near retirement. We can do so much more with lateral versus having them on the street in six months and having a new recruit on the street in nine months.”
Pruitt expressed disappointment over the rejection.
“I thought this was such a no-brainer idea, you know, when somebody’s offering to help us, to be able to put more boots on the ground,” he said. “Could you imagine an extra 50 officers? And one of the pushbacks (I got) was that the deputies wouldn’t be working directly for us. I don’t understand that because Sheriff Cunningham is a pretty good guy who a lot of people like to work for.”
Mayor Steven Reed has repeatedly refused to disclose how many officers are currently employed by the city.
