Prichard Police Department working to implement five police reform initiatives

PRICHARD, Ala. (WPMI) — The Prichard Police Department will now be making some changes to their policing practices and focus on rebuilding community trust after meeting with young community members and Alabama State Representative Napoleon Bracy, Jr.

The Alabama Youth Legislative Council and Representative Bracy said after several weeks of working with Prichard Police Chief Walter Knight, the Prichard Police Department has agreed to take on these five police reform initiatives:

• More community based policing
• Creating a public database of officer conduct
• Training on systemic racism
• Implementing body cameras
• Creating an advisory board

The Alabama Youth Legislative Council and Rep. Bracy said they wanted to see real change in Prichard and hope these police reform initiatives will bridge the gap between the community and police officers.

“We feel that it’s a big gap in our community between the African-American community and the police department, and one of those things we have to do is try to build more transparency and more trust on both sides of the issue,” Bracy said.

Mya Nobles with the Alabama Youth Legislative Council said she and other members were deeply affected by the death of George Floyd and wanted to prevent something like that from happening in Prichard.

“We don’t wanna wait until something happens to instate change. We want to get in front of it, get ahead of it, prevent anything from happening before it happens, and the best way to do it is create reform and initiatives,” Nobles said.

Prichard Police Chief Walter Knight said he wants to take on these reforms, starting with body cameras. He thinks it is feasible for the department to purchase and implement them. He hopes all of his officers will soon be equipped with body cameras.

“The camera itself will be a neutral party that can tell you what happened on certain scenes. So to me personally, I think it protects the police officer as well as the citizen,” Chief Knight said.

Knight said they also want to immediately take steps in creating a public database of officer conduct.

“I think it’s a good thing because a lot of times, we hire police officers from other agencies and we don’t know the real reason that they left that agency. I think this database would show us different things that we can’t see at a normal interview. Also, some of the good things an officer has done. Not just the bad things, but things like the awards an officer has received and the community initiatives they were involved in,” Knight said.

Bracy said he and the council hope to see more officers engaged in the community.

“We talked about the police officers visiting some of the local churches. We talked about police officers doing some things in front of the grocery stores, going to the different schools in the area and just kind of becoming the face of the police department in the community. So we could all become kind of cohesive in our working effort in the community,” Bracy said.

Knight said he understands why there is a lack of trust on both sides of the issue and hopes by implementing some of these measures that will change.

“Hopefully we can get back to a point where citizens can trust police officers and know that we’re here to help them, not to harm them,” Knight said.