MOBILE COUNTY, Ala. — Mobile County Constable Albert McCreary, who also worked as a paid code enforcement officer for the city of Prichard, has been charged with first-degree rape and first-degree sexual assault, according to the Mobile County Sheriff’s Office. Sheriff Paul Burch said the charges, announced Monday, Aug. 3, stem from an investigation into an allegation that McCreary sexually assaulted a woman while he was on duty with the city of Prichard.
The woman reported that the assault occurred while McCreary was on the clock, and investigators determined he was actually working a side job at the time rather than performing his duties for the city while being paid, Burch said. Burch said details of the side job have not been released, but he noted it is unrelated to the funeral escort service that Prichard Police Chief Walter Knight and Major Aaron Tucker have separately been accused of running while on duty.
The distinction mattered to investigators because it went to what McCreary was doing when the alleged assault occurred — not city work, and not the escort arrangement that has drawn its own scrutiny in Prichard, but private employment of a kind the sheriff’s office has not described. The case has become part of a broader examination of how people in and around Prichard government used their positions, their badges and their work hours.
The arrest
Sheriff’s deputies, working with the Gulf of America Homeland Security Task Force, located and arrested McCreary on July 28. Officials said a firearm was found inside his vehicle at the time of the arrest. The presence of the weapon would matter in a case like this because of what investigators say they found next: a prior felony record that barred McCreary from possessing a gun at all.
Based on the evidence gathered, investigators sought and received approval from the state to charge McCreary with first-degree rape, first-degree sexual assault, certain persons forbidden to possess a firearm, and first-degree unlawful imprisonment. As charges not yet proven in court, McCreary is presumed innocent unless and until convicted.
The task force involvement reflects how the case moved. Federal-state partnerships of that kind typically enter when a suspect is mobile, when the record check runs across state lines, or when a federal gun charge is available alongside the state counts — all of which turned out to be part of this case.
A prior record in Florida
Burch said his investigators also uncovered a “violent criminal history” tied to a prior felony conviction in Escambia County, Florida. According to the sheriff’s office, McCreary was originally charged there with aggravated assault with a deadly weapon without intent to kill, a charge that was later reduced to a misdemeanor count of improper exhibition of a firearm. He was also charged with failing to disclose public aid over $200; adjudication on that charge was withheld, and he was sentenced to four years of probation.
Deputies said McCreary was previously charged in Escambia County with molestation of a child under 12 and felony battery. The molestation charge was dismissed after he pleaded guilty to felony battery. Officials have not released additional details about the earlier Florida cases, including when they occurred.
Under Alabama law, a conviction of that kind would have made it a felony for McCreary to carry the firearm deputies found in his vehicle — hence the certain-persons-forbidden count among the state charges, and a separate federal indictment that followed.
What the record did not stop, apparently, was his public employment. McCreary held a paid position with Prichard’s code enforcement operation and, separately, an elected constable’s post in Mobile County — offices whose holders are authorized to perform limited law-enforcement-adjacent functions. How a man with a Florida felony record came to hold either position, and what screening was applied, is among the questions the case has raised, and the district attorney is examining part of it directly.
The investigation continues
The Mobile County District Attorney’s Office is separately investigating the circumstances surrounding McCreary’s election to public office and is expected to file additional charges. Burch said investigators are continuing to uncover other cases involving McCreary from across the country.
That statement — cases from across the country — suggests investigators believe the pattern extends well beyond Mobile County, and it explains why the sheriff’s office has been deliberate about releasing information as it verifies it. Each new allegation must be run down, documented and presented to prosecutors before it becomes a charge.
McCreary was taken into federal custody by the U.S. Marshals Service on a federal hold and remains in custody as he awaits trial. He had previously been indicted by a federal grand jury on a charge of being a felon in possession of a firearm, in a case tied to the same traffic stop that led investigators to him, and he also faces a separate civil petition from the Mobile County District Attorney’s Office seeking his removal from his elected constable post.
The removal petition is the mechanism by which Alabama law allows an elected official to be stripped of office short of a criminal conviction, through a court proceeding that examines fitness for office. Its filing signals that the district attorney’s office did not want McCreary holding the constable’s position while the criminal cases moved forward.
What a constable is — and why this case stings
Constables in Alabama are county-level elected officials whose modern duties are narrow, but whose historical association with law enforcement gives the title weight in the community. A constable charged with rape and unlawful imprisonment — while working, allegedly, in a position of public authority in Prichard — is the kind of case that erodes confidence in small offices that rarely receive scrutiny between elections.
The Prichard angle compounds that concern. The city of roughly 20,000 residents north of Mobile has for years been under close watch over its finances and its government, and the separate accusations against its police chief and a major — an on-duty funeral escort business — have already put the city’s personnel practices under examination. McCreary’s case adds a third thread, and Burch has been careful to keep the threads distinct: the side job McCreary was working during the alleged assault was not the escort operation named in the accusations against Knight and Tucker.
The sheriff’s statement
“This investigation demonstrates exactly why we work closely with our federal, state and local partners,” Burch said in a statement. “When allegations this serious are made, our responsibility is to follow the evidence wherever it leads. No title, position or elected office places anyone above the law. Our investigators will continue to pursue these cases thoroughly and professionally, and we will allow the judicial process to determine the outcome.”
The statement frames the case the way the sheriff’s office intends to carry it through the courts: as evidence-driven, pursued across jurisdictions, and untouched by whatever office or title the defendant held. The emphasis on partnerships matches the mechanics of the arrest — county deputies working with a federal homeland security task force, a U.S. Marshals hold, a federal indictment and a state prosecution running in parallel.
What comes next
The case now moves through several tracks at once. The state charges — first-degree rape, first-degree sexual assault, certain persons forbidden to possess a firearm and first-degree unlawful imprisonment — will be handled in the local courts, where first-degree rape alone can carry a sentence measured in decades. The federal felon-in-possession case proceeds on its own calendar. The civil removal petition targets the constable’s office. And the district attorney’s continuing investigation into how McCreary was elected, along with what Burch described as other cases involving McCreary from across the country, could add charges in both state and federal court.
For the woman who reported the assault, the outcome depends on evidence gathered quickly in the first days — the forensic work, the side-job records that established where McCreary actually was, the statements taken by sheriff’s investigators — being preserved and presented. The sheriff’s decision to announce the charges within a week of the arrest, with the details he could lawfully release, put the case on the public record early.
For Prichard and Mobile County, the questions left behind will outlast the trial. How does a paid municipal code enforcement position, a constable’s office and a prior Florida record coexist in one person without anyone flagging it? What checks, if any, applied when McCreary was hired and when he qualified for office? And are there other holders of small public offices in the county whose backgrounds were never examined? Those questions belong, for now, to the district attorney’s continuing investigation — and, ultimately, to the county’s voters.
McCreary remains in federal custody. He is presumed innocent unless and until convicted, and the courts — state and federal — will now decide the case on the evidence the sheriff’s investigators and their partners have assembled.