Earlier this month, Representative Reed Ingram, R-Pike Road, pre-filed a bill which would allow the governor and state attorney general to jointly appoint interim police chiefs to oversee municipalities’ police departments.
Another bill to allow the appointment of interim police chiefs was already considered during the 2025 Legislative Session but wasn’t passed because the state Legislature focused on Governor Kay Ivey’s priorities like the “Back the Blue” immunity bill, Ingram told APR during an interview on Thursday.
The representative explained that House Bill 36, the bill he’s prefiled, is just the bill he supported last session, with amendments approved earlier this year included.
The main changes include requiring that the governor and attorney general jointly agree to appoint an interim chief, rather than allowing either one to do so after just consulting the other, and a six month time limit on how long someone so appointed could serve. Making the decision a joint one was intended to preempt the use of the law in pursuit of “political vendettas,” he stated.
“We have school intervention and school intervention is with state takeover,” Ingram explained. “So, if a school is not performing, then the state would come over, whether it be financially or whether it be by grades. This would be the same concept. If a city is not performing on keeping the crime down, or recruit and retainment on law enforcement, then we would come in and help them out with it.”
As filed, the bill requires the governor and attorney general to review crime statistics, determine the number of law enforcement officers in the department is 30 percent or more below a rolling ten-year average, and consult with the local district attorney, sheriff and “victims of crimes committed within the municipality.”
“This is not about taking any cities’ governing bodies away, it’s just for public safety,” Ingram said.
“There’s no requirements to be a mayor, and sometimes it’s just a popularity contest,” he asserted. “I’m not saying there’s any of that going on now, but we always need to plan for the future.”
The bill specifies that interim police chiefs would “serve under the authority and at the pleasure of the Attorney General and Governor and shall not be subject to the authority of the mayor, city council, or other official of a municipality.”
Asked if any specific Alabama cities inspired the legislation, Ingram pointed to the crime rate in Bessemer and police retention issues in Montgomery. “I think [Montgomery mayor Steven Reed] is not doing a bad job at all, but he’s having a hard time recruiting and retaining police officers,” he noted.
Ingram told APR he had frequently communicated with both the attorney general’s office and the governor’s office about the bill during last session.
“The AG’s office helped draft the bill with my idea as far as intervention like the school takeovers,” Ingram recounted. “So it’s their language in the bill.” He also said that “we kept the governor’s office informed every time the bill was changed before it was dropped.”
The governor, the attorney general and the speaker of the House have already been informed Ingram has prefiled the bill for consideration during the upcoming session, he said.
“We feel like it’s going to have a lot more traction this time, especially seeing some of the things that’s going on in some of the other municipalities across the country, not the state, but across the country,” Ingram predicted.
Earlier in the interview, Ingram had compared his bill to President Donald Trump’s deployment of federal agents and National Guard soldiers in Washington, D.C.
“Our president had the option to be able to take over D.C. because it falls under federal [authority],” the representative told APR. “The state can’t take over on any city jurisdiction to help them with their police department, if they wanted it or didn’t want it.”
