OPELIKA — U.S. Sen. Tommy Tuberville (R-Auburn) said on Monday that he planned to hire “dozens and dozens of state troopers” if elected Alabama’s next governor in November.
Tuberville said during a speech to the Alabama Sheriffs Association on Monday in Opelika that he wanted to “streamline” state government while hiring more law enforcement officers and implementing a new mental health program.
“The one thing I want to do is make sure that we have more law enforcement officers. We will hire in the first six months dozens and dozens of state troopers. We’re going to put them on the roads. We’re going to find the money for it. We got to do it. That will help you. It will cut back on the things that you’re going to have to cover,” Tuberville said. “We’re running bare minimum. We can’t do that. We live in a dangerous world. It’s getting worse and worse. We’re not going to let these people come in here and control our neighborhoods and our streets. We’ve got to protect them. Where does it start? It starts with you. It starts with state police. It starts with everything that ALEA has in charge. I’ll tell you this: we’re going to change a lot of things when we take over as governor. We’re going to streamline. We’re going to do things where money is not going out the door; it’s going to you. It’s going to the people that actually do the job. I’m looking forward to that.”
Tuberville said he was working on a plan to solve Alabama’s “huge mental health problem.”
“I’m looking forward to working with each one of you. We’ll have a meeting pretty quick after January when we get in where we can talk about certain situations and how we can help. I don’t know your problems. I know some of them. I want to know your problems. I want to know where we can help, where we can put the money. I’m going to meet here pretty soon with all the D.A.’s in the state. It’s time we put people in jail, folks. We don’t need them going in the front door and out the back. It’s time to put people in jail. If they’re held accountable, we can control them a lot better,” Tuberville said. “We also want to take care of mental health. We’re working on a mental health program as we speak. It costs money. Sure it does; it costs money. I hear you guys talking about it, ‘Coach, our mental health program is we get them off the street and put them in the jail, after a while we turn them back out on the street, and it’s kind of like a merry-go-round.’ I understand that. We just can’t let them go out on the streets. We’ve got to try to rehabilitate as much as possible. We’ve got hospitals in some of these areas that are going under. We need to use those beds for mental health. We need to keep them on meds as long as possible to get them to a situation where they can actually be productive in our society. We have a huge mental health problem, huge mental health problem. It’s going to get worse. We can’t just step back and say it’ll take care of itself. It won’t take care of itself.”
Tuberville continued, “Again, get them off the streets, get them where they can get some help. Have enough beds around the state. We’ve got a lot of rural hospitals that have closed down. We’ve got to use those beds. We’ve got to use federal money in some areas to keep that and make it work in that scenario.”
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