The Legislature has Prioritized Public Safety, It's Time for Some Cities to Do the Same

We've all seen the headlines coming out of Montgomery in the last few months.

Someone gets killed or seriously injured, the mayor holds a press conference blaming everyone but himself, until the next violent incident, where it just repeats itself.

We're only halfway through 2024, and there have already been at least 35 homicides and hundreds of shootings in Montgomery.

Mayor Steven Reed wants you to believe that there just isn't anything he can do.

According to him, the violence Alabama's Capital City is experiencing stems from the Legislature passing a constitutional carry law two years ago.

As a retired police officer and chairman of the House Public Safety Homeland Security Committee, I have a few issues with that statement.

The first is that the criminals who are killing people would have never gotten a pistol permit to carry what is, in most cases, a stolen firearm. Law-abiding gun owners aren't the ones firing off 1,000 rounds over a disagreement at a party.

My next issue is, how can we expect law and order when the Montgomery Police Department, which Mayor Reed is responsible for, is so poorly run that its attrition rate is among the worst in the state? I know from my 31 years as a law enforcement officer that the fastest way to run off good police officers is by not supporting them. When officer morale is as low as it is in the City of Montgomery's Police Department, due to either a lack of leadership, support from its elected officials, or its critical staffing level, you end up with a department incapable of combating Montgomery's crime.

Finally, Mayor Reed argues that police officers cannot determine who is or isn't lawfully carrying a firearm because the Legislature removed the requirement for law-abiding citizens to pay for their Second Amendment rights.

That's totally false, and he knows it or should know it.

When we passed the constitutional carry legislation, the Legislature also passed a bill creating the Firearms Prohibited Person Database – the first in the nation. This tool enables law enforcement officers across the state to learn of a person's inability to possess a firearm when running suspects' information after making contact. I wonder if Montgomery PD is even utilizing this new law to protect citizens and police officers.

Back when concealed carry permits were still required, law enforcement relied on an antiquated system to track these permits that simply did not work as it should.

The first issue with the former system was that law enforcement had to contact the issuing authority to verify the permit's validity, which was almost impossible to do outside of regular business hours. It wasn't like verifying someone's driver's license – permits were issued by the counties and often had no security features.

The biggest and most dangerous issue that this new law solved is that we had no way of nullifying someone's permit if they were convicted of a crime that prohibited them from owning or carrying a firearm.

For instance, if an individual is convicted by our courts or receives a protection order, they lose their right to carry a firearm under federal law. Prior to the Firearms Prohibited Person Database, we had no way to track this from jurisdiction to jurisdiction.

The facts just aren't on Mayor Reed's side. Law enforcement can now determine in minutes whether someone is prohibited from carrying a firearm, which was not the case prior to the Legislature creating the Firearms Prohibited Person Database.

This problem didn't magically appear when constitutional carry was implemented in 2022. Montgomery had 77 homicides in 2021 and 68 in 2020.

However, it is worth noting that the city averaged 38.5 homicides per year in the four years prior to Mayor Reed taking office in November 2019.

It's easy to see that the Legislature didn't cause this mess – local leadership did. You can't expect your police force to be successful when it's had a revolving door of police chiefs.

You can't expect your city to be safe when the culture within the police department runs off good officers.

And you can't expect people to believe this is anyone's mess but your own, Mr. Mayor.