PRICHARD, Ala. — A special Mobile County grand jury called for Prichard Police Chief Walter Knight to be removed and for the city’s police department to be dismantled and rebuilt. But a day after those recommendations became public, city council members said Alabama law may leave them powerless to act without Mayor Carletta Davis, who has not attended a council meeting since May. The recommendation arrived at a moment when the city’s government is already fractured, with its top executive absent from the body that shares power over city operations and its police force operating under outside supervision.
Davis was again absent Thursday night as council members and their attorney worked through what authority the council actually holds following the arrests of Knight and Prichard Police Maj. Aaron Tucker. City council livestream video shows Davis has not attended a meeting since the June 16 raid of the Prichard Police Department by local and federal law enforcement, after which the Mobile County Sheriff’s Office took over most of the city’s law enforcement operations. The mayor has also not said publicly whether Knight and Tucker remain city employees, a question that sits at the heart of the council’s dilemma because removal authority in Prichard’s form of government does not rest with the council alone.
The Allegations
Knight and Tucker are accused of using city time, patrol vehicles and other public resources to earn private income working funeral procession escorts. Both face charges of using an official position for personal gain and second-degree theft by deception. Prosecutors allege that the two officers conducted a private business activity — guiding and directing funeral corteges through Prichard and neighboring communities — while on duty, in city vehicles, on city fuel, thereby converting public resources into personal income.
Neither man has been convicted, and both are entitled to a presumption of innocence. The charges are formal accusations, and any guilt or innocence will be determined in court, not by the council or by public debate. Still, the allegations set off the sequence of events that produced the grand jury’s involvement: a raid on the department itself, the arrests of its two highest-ranking officers, and the transfer of day-to-day policing to the Mobile County Sheriff’s Office while the city’s own force sits largely sidelined.
The Grand Jury’s Recommendations
The grand jury recommended that Prichard begin proceedings to remove Knight, dismantle and rebuild the police department to nationally recognized accreditation standards, and contract with Mobile County for law enforcement services during the rebuild. Taken together, the recommendations amount to a full restructuring of public safety in a city of roughly 22,000 residents — not a personnel decision but a top-to-bottom reconstruction of how the department is organized, trained and certified.
The recommendations are not legally binding, which has left the question of who can act on them, and how, at the center of Thursday’s council debate. A grand jury report can put public and political pressure on a city government, but it carries no enforcement mechanism of its own. Someone with legal authority — the mayor, the council, or both acting together — must actually initiate removal proceedings, approve a contract with the county, and fund a rebuild. The grand jury’s document does none of those things by itself.
A Legal Tangle Over Who Holds the Power
Mobile County District Attorney Keith Blackwood has pointed to Alabama Code 11-43-160 as one possible avenue for the council to remove Knight. That general municipal statute allows a city council, by two-thirds vote, to remove a municipal employee for cause after notice and a hearing. On its face, the statute appears to give the council a path: bring charges, hold a hearing, and vote Knight out with a supermajority of the five-member body.
Council members, however, said the picture may be more complicated in Prichard’s actual form of government. The city operates under a mayor-council structure in which the mayor serves as the appointing authority for department heads, and council members questioned whether the removal power in the general statute can be exercised without the participation of the appointing authority — the mayor herself. With Davis absent from every meeting since May and offering no public position on whether Knight and Tucker remain employed, the council cannot easily complete a process that may require her involvement, her signature, or her acquiescence at some stage.
The council’s attorney walked members through the competing readings of the law during the Thursday session. One reading treats the council as fully empowered under the statute to remove an employee for cause on its own vote. Another holds that in a mayor-council city, disciplinary authority over the police chief flows from the mayor’s appointing power, and that a council acting alone would invite a lawsuit the city could lose. Either way, the absence of the mayor leaves the council unable to resolve the question cleanly: it can attempt removal and risk legal challenge, or wait and leave the department’s leadership in limbo.
The Mayor’s Absence
Davis’s absence from council meetings has now stretched from May through the June 16 raid and into the grand jury report’s release, and it has become a defining feature of the city’s crisis. Livestream video of each meeting records an empty mayor’s seat while the council attempts to conduct the city’s most serious business in years. The mayor has offered no public explanation for the absences and no public statement on the status of Knight and Tucker’s employment.
That silence matters practically as well as politically. If the two officers remain on the city payroll, the city continues to carry their employment costs while the Sheriff’s Office provides the actual policing. If they have been separated from employment, no one has announced it, and the council’s removal question becomes moot in practice but unconfirmed on the record. Either way, the absence of the city’s chief executive from the governing body leaves the branch that holds appointing authority unrepresented at the very meetings where her participation would matter most.
What the Sheriff’s Takeover Means
Since the June 16 raid, the Mobile County Sheriff’s Office has taken over most of the city’s law enforcement operations, providing patrol and response coverage while Prichard’s own department sits largely out of service. The arrangement has kept officers on the city’s streets, but it is an interim measure without a defined end, and the grand jury’s recommendation to contract with Mobile County for services during a rebuild would essentially formalize and extend it.
Contracting with the sheriff would require a vote of the council and likely the mayor’s participation, along with a funding decision, adding another item to the list of actions that appear to require cooperation from an absent executive. Until that decision is made, the city exists in a holding pattern: its police department under indictment-driven scrutiny, its two top officers charged, its streets policed by the county, and its government unable to act on the most significant recommendations it has received in years.
What Rebuilding to Accreditation Standards Would Take
The grand jury’s call to rebuild the department to nationally recognized accreditation standards points to a process most Alabama cities have never attempted. Accreditation for law enforcement agencies typically comes through bodies that set standards covering hiring, training, evidence handling, use-of-force policies, supervision and internal accountability. A department that meets those standards documents its policies, trains to them, and submits to external review. Prichard’s department, like many small municipal forces, has operated without that external certification, and the grand jury concluded that a full rebuild — rather than a patch — is the appropriate remedy.
A rebuild of that scale would involve rewriting policies, retraining or replacing officers, upgrading supervision and records systems, and recruiting new leadership, all while the Sheriff’s Office supplies daily coverage. It would also take a sustained funding commitment from a small city with a limited budget. None of that work can begin, council members noted, until someone with authority decides to begin it.
The Council’s Options
Leaving Thursday’s meeting, the council faces a narrow set of options. It can attempt removal proceedings under Code 11-43-160 on its own vote and risk a legal challenge over whether the mayor’s participation is required. It can petition the mayor publicly to appear and act, converting the absence into a formal record of the executive branch’s failure to engage. It can begin drafting a contract with Mobile County for law enforcement services and bring it to a vote, testing whether that action can proceed without her. Or it can wait, which preserves the status quo but leaves the city without a functioning police department, without resolved leadership, and without any public plan.
Each option carries cost. Acting alone invites litigation; waiting extends the Sheriff’s Office coverage indefinitely and leaves charged officers’ employment status unresolved. Council members gave no final decision Thursday night, saying they needed to complete their review of the city’s legal authority before committing to a course.
What Comes Next
The immediate questions are narrow but consequential: whether Knight and Tucker remain city employees, whether the council will attempt removal under the statute Blackwood identified, and whether the city will move toward a formal contract with the Mobile County Sheriff’s Office. The longer-term questions are larger: whether Prichard will rebuild its own department to accreditation standards as the grand jury urged, and whether its mayor will return to the council chamber to take part in any of it.
Until Davis reappears, every one of those questions runs through a gap in the city’s government. The grand jury has said what it believes should happen; the district attorney has identified a legal pathway; the council has the votes to act if the law permits it; and the Sheriff’s Office is holding the line on daily policing. What is missing is the participation of the one official whose absence has made all the rest impossible to resolve.
For residents, the practical picture remains unchanged in the near term: county deputies answering calls, a suspended police department, and a city council searching for authority it may not have. The grand jury’s recommendations now sit on the desk of a government that cannot fully act on them — unless, and until, its mayor comes back to work.