The Alabama House failed to pass legislation on the final day of the 2026 session that would have mandated minimum staffing levels for certain police departments.
Senate Bill 298, sponsored by Senator Will Barfoot, R-Pike Road, would have required Class 3 municipalities to meet minimum staffing requirements. Under the bill, municipalities that fail to meet the requirements within a five-year grace period may face intervention from the state through the Alabama Law Enforcement Agency.
The bill would mandate that Alabama’s two Class 3 municipalities, Montgomery and Huntsville, have 1.9 full-time law enforcement officers on staff, per 1,000 residents, based on the 2020 census.
According to the census, about 200,600 people live in Montgomery.
Although the Montgomery Police Department does not publicly disclose how many officers it has on staff, Barfoot estimated that 220 to 230 officers are employed by the department. The sponsor’s estimate would place the city’s officer-resident ratio between 1.1 and 1.15 officers per 1,003 citizens.
The city would be required to have at least 381 full-time officers on staff to comply with SB298’s required staffing quota.
The 2020 census found that 215,000 people lived in Huntsville. With around 500 Huntsville PD officers on staff, according to the city’s website, Huntsville employs 2 officers per 860 residents, meeting the bill’s minimum staffing requirements.
Municipalities that don’t meet minimum staffing requirements laid out by SB298 would have had five years to comply with the legislation. During that period, the municipality would be required to improve its recruitment numbers by at least 10 percent annually. The city’s police chief must also submit a report to ALEA on the number of sworn officers in the department and what actions the department is taking to meet the quota.
If the city failed to meet staffing requirements by the end of the grace period, ALEA would have been able to create a corrective plan to increase the number of officers in the municipality. This may include cooperative agreements with other law enforcement agencies throughout the state.
The House adjourned without debating or voting on SB298, despite the bill being placed on the body’s calendar for its final legislative day of 2026.
Barfoot, who represents eastern Montgomery and much of Montgomery County, argued the bill’s necessity to improve public safety in Class 3 municipalities throughout the 2026 session.
However, the legislation received backlash from both Montgomery Mayor Steven Reed and Montgomery Police Chief James Graboys, who appeared at a Senate County and Municipal Government Committee hearing in opposition to SB298.
The officials argued the legislation constituted state overreach into local government, which would weaken public trust in local law enforcement while burdening the city’s government with an unfunded mandate.
During a press conference held last week on SB298, Reed pointed to the Metro Area Crime Suppression Unit, an existing collaboration between city, county, state and federal law enforcement, launched in 2024. The mayor argued that while the collaboration has been successful in curbing crime in the city, SB298 would fail to improve public safety and force an unwanted partnership onto local law enforcement.
“Partnerships can work when done correctly,” Reed said. “Takeovers do not. Punishment does not. And that’s what Senate Bill 298 sets out to do.”
The legislation also faced backlash from several state Democrats, including Senator Kirk Hatcher, D-Montgomery, who was not recognized to speak before the Senate during its vote on the bill, despite multiple attempts. Hatcher and additional Democratic lawmakers disavowed the legislation as an attempt to wrestle control from local authorities, which was drafted without input from local government and the community.
“If you really wanted to do this in a way that speaks to what it means to be a community, we would have had a discussion about this. No breathing room was offered for Montgomery,” Hatcher said during the Senate vote on SB298.
Hatcher, who also appeared at the press conference in opposition to the bill, vowed to fight the legislation.
Messages were left with Barfoot’s office on Thursday evening, requesting comment on the legislation failing to achieve final passage.
