The Alabama Senate will consider legislation on Tuesday that sets minimum staffing standards for law enforcement agencies in Montgomery and Huntsville.
The bill by State Sen. Will Barfoot (R-Pike Road) would provide minimum staffing requirements for Class 3 municipal law enforcement agencies. Alabama has two Class 3 cities, Montgomery and Huntsville. Most of the discussion about the bill has centered around Montgomery.
The requirements would include a minimum of two full-time law enforcement officers per 1,000 residents of the municipality. The bill would establish a five-year compliance period for municipalities not in compliance on the effective date of the act. During this compliance period, the municipality would be required to meet certain goals and increase staffing. The bill would provide that if a municipality fails to meet certain staffing requirements, the Alabama State Law Enforcement Agency would be authorized to assume oversight of the municipal law enforcement agency. The bill would authorize the Attorney General to seek to recover any costs incurred by the state in overseeing a municipal law enforcement agency.
Montgomery City Councilman Ed Grimes recently estimated Montgomery's current police staffing level is between 220 and 230 officers, while the bill would require Montgomery to be at around 400 officers or allow ALEA to assume oversight of the police department.
Barfoot told 1819 News on Monday he planned to propose a floor amendment to the bill to change the legislation’s requirement to 1.9 officers per 1,000 residents at the request of Huntsville lawmakers.
Former Montgomery acting police chief John Hall said in 2024 that Montgomery needed at least 400 officers.
Montgomery Mayor Steven Reed called the bill an “unfunded mandate in a statement on Monday.
“SB 298 is not about public safety, it is about control," Reed said. "This bill imposes an unfunded mandate on Montgomery that the State of Alabama itself fails to meet by a factor of twenty. You cannot hold cities to a standard you refuse to meet at the state level. Our police department is delivering real results - violent crime has declined, homicides have declined, and our community is safer today than it was just a few years ago. This legislation doesn’t support that progress. It puts it at risk.”
Barfoot said, “The unfunded mandate is essentially what the state of Alabama, taxpayers across the state have been paying for in this Metro Area Crime Suppression Unit, which has worked very well.”
“ALEA and (Montgomery) Sheriff’s Office and other agencies working in Montgomery to have more interaction with folks and try to prevent crime or get folks off the street who have active pending warrants on them,” he added. “The taxpayers throughout the state are paying for that. As far as any local monies that are there, I looked at several budgets for the last four budget cycles for the city of Montgomery (and) Montgomery has somewhere north of $40 million that they’ve budgeted that has not been expended in the area of police protection, so that money is there. It has been budgeted. There’s a significant amount of money that has been budgeted for police protection that is there and has not been used. I guess they just haven’t been able to get the numbers up.”
Barfoot continued, “A city the same size as Montgomery, Birmingham, hired 202 new officers since January 2025, going through August of 2025. That’s amazing. I don’t know how Birmingham can do that, and Montgomery has not been able to.”
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