PRICHARD OFFICIALS MUST EXPLAIN POLICE SHOOTING

PRICHARD CITY officials are doing the credibility of the Police Department
no good by continuing to be less than forthcoming about a controversial
police shooting.

On Dec. 11, two Prichard narcotics officers shot into a car in Alabama
Village, wounding three men, one critically. The following day, 6-year-old
Kearis Bonham was killed by stray gunfire from a shootout in the nearby
Queens Court apartment complex, where Prichard police officers were
ambushed in what officials say was retaliation for the Alabama Village
shooting.

The tragic death of a little boy who was caught in the crossfire made it
all the more imperative that Prichard police explain to the public what
happened in the Alabama Village shooting. Four months later, much remains
unexplained.

It was not until the end of March that Prichard Police Chief Sammie Brown
identified the two narcotics officers involved. He said they had followed
proper procedure in the shooting -- that the two officers had begun firing
when a car they had pulled over began backing up into their car.

However, Chief Brown was unclear about many of the details, telling a
Register reporter that he did not have the case file in front of him. The
following week, Chief Brown said he could not comment further on the advice
of Prichard City Attorney Arthur Madden, nor would he release the
guidelines he said the police officers followed when they discharged their
weapons.

The guidelines themselves are clearly public records under Alabama's open
records act, and Prichard authorities are obligated to make those
guidelines public. The Register has now filed a formal request for the
release of those guidelines.

Prichard citizens deserve to know what policies govern the use of deadly
force by the members of their Police Department. Only then can they judge
for themselves whether the two officers acted properly.

Prichard citizens also have yet to learn why the two officers pulled the
car over -- a key piece of information in reviewing their conduct. None of
the four men who were in the car has been charged with doing anything wrong.

In contrast, Mobile police were much more open about a similarly
controversial event last year in which a police officer was severely
injured and a drug suspect killed in a shootout at the Roger Williams
public housing community.

The shooting touched off a disturbance at Roger Williams that night. Two
weeks later, Mobile Police Chief Sam Cochran released the results of the
department's internal investigation -- which conluded that the shooting was
justified. Chief Cochran illustrated what happened with a map and explained
the sequence of events in detail.

The handling of the Roger Williams case proves that authorities can, within
a reasonable time frame, account to the public for the actions of police
without jeopardizing a continuing investigation. Although the Alabama
Village case has been turned over to the Mobile County District Attorney's
office for further investigation and a grand jury review, there is no
reason that Chief Brown cannot provide as much detail as Chief Cochran did.

The Prichard vice unit, of which the two officers involved in the Alabama
Village shooting were a part, has already seen six former officers
convicted in connection with a racketeering investigation. For Prichard
city officials not to fully disclose what happened in the Alabama Village
shooting is unfair both to the citizens of Prichard and to the narcotics
officers themselves.