A cheering, standing-room crowd packed the Prichard City Council chambers as the city formally swore in new leaders for its police and fire departments, closing out a search for permanent chiefs that had dragged on for more than two years. Mayor Troy Ephriam told those gathered that “good things come to those who wait,” a line that captured the mood of a ceremony years in the making.
The appointment of permanent leadership ends one of the most persistent management problems in the city’s public safety ranks. Since late 2012, both of Prichard’s emergency services departments had cycled through acting and interim leaders, a stretch of uncertainty that complicated budgeting, hiring and long-term planning for the departments residents depend on. City officials said the two years of turnover consumed energy that should have gone into operations, and that restoring stability was among the administration’s top priorities coming into the year.
A new police chief
Bernard Parrish, a former officer with the Bayou La Batre Police Department, the University of South Alabama police and the 13th Judicial Circuit Court police, was officially installed as Prichard’s police chief. He becomes the fifth person to hold the role, whether permanently or on an interim basis, since Ephriam parted ways with the department’s previous chief back in December 2012. Parrish had served as interim chief since November 2014, and the City Council approved his contract the following month.
Parrish’s career spans small coastal departments, a university force and court security police, giving him experience with the range of duties a mid-size municipal department must cover. His time as interim chief gave city officials a lengthy audition, and council members said his steady handling of the department during that period weighed heavily in the decision to make the appointment permanent.
A permanent fire chief
Fred Chambers, a longtime member of the Prichard Fire-Rescue Department who has served the department since at least the early 2000s, was named permanent fire chief. He had been serving in an interim capacity since 2013, after the previous chief’s employment with the city ended. Chambers said the moment offered a sense of validation, though he was already looking ahead to the department’s daily demands, adding there was little time to dwell on the milestone before getting back to work.
Chambers rose through the ranks of a department that handles fire suppression and emergency medical response across the city, and colleagues described him as a fireservice veteran known more for consistency than for ceremony. His permanent appointment, like Parrish’s, was approved by the City Council following the mayor’s recommendation.
Both new chiefs used their remarks to outline priorities for their departments. Parrish said his immediate focus would be increasing the number of officers patrolling Prichard’s streets and securing more vehicles for the department, though he declined to disclose current staffing numbers, citing safety concerns. He said he planned to pursue grant funding to help pay for additional hires, arguing that officer counts directly affect crime levels in the city.
Grant programs run by the federal government have long helped smaller Alabama departments expand their ranks, offering salary support for new officers in exchange for local matching funds and retention commitments. Parrish said competing successfully for those dollars would be central to his staffing strategy, particularly in a city where the budget has limited room for new recurring payroll.
Chambers echoed similar goals for the fire department, saying he hoped to boost manpower and improve effectiveness across the ranks. He also pointed to a challenge tied to Prichard’s fiscal history, noting that the city’s past bankruptcy has complicated efforts to offer competitive pay. He said he has been working with the mayor’s office to find ways to raise salaries and address staff retention.
Prichard’s municipal bankruptcy, which stretched across years of court proceedings before the city emerged, left a lasting mark on the city’s finances and its ability to compete for employees with larger neighboring departments. Firefighters and police officers trained in Prichard have at times been recruited away by agencies offering higher pay, and both chiefs said keeping experienced personnel is as important as recruiting new ones.
The dual swearing-in closes a turbulent chapter for Prichard’s public safety leadership, which saw a string of interim appointments and departures over roughly two years. With permanent chiefs now in place for both departments, city officials expressed hope that the stability will translate into steadier staffing and service for Prichard residents going forward.
City leaders said the continuity matters beyond symbolism. Departments operating under interim leadership often defer major purchases, delay promotions and hesitate to launch new programs because the next chief could reverse course. With contracts approved and mandates in hand, Parrish and Chambers can now pursue multi-year plans — from vehicle replacement schedules to grant applications that require a commitment to keep funded personnel on the payroll for years after the money arrives.
The ceremony drew family members, rank-and-file officers and firefighters, and a cross-section of city officials who watched the departments operate through two years of uncertainty. Several speakers noted that the city’s public safety employees kept working through the turnover, maintaining response times and daily operations despite the leadership churn above them.
Community leaders at the ceremony said the departments’ stability is especially important in a city that has worked to shed the financial image left by its bankruptcy. Prichard has spent recent years rebuilding its budget, paying down obligations and trying to demonstrate to residents and prospective businesses that city government can deliver basic services reliably. Permanent leadership in police and fire, officials said, is one of the clearest signals a city its size can send.
The chiefs’ contract approvals by the City Council also carry practical weight. Both men now hold agreements that spell out their duties, compensation and terms, replacing the informal arrangements that governed their interim service. Council members said the contracts give the departments fixed points of accountability and give the chiefs standing to plan beyond any single budget year.
Prichard, a city of roughly 22,000 residents just north of Mobile, has worked in recent years to stabilize its finances and rebuild public confidence after its bankruptcy. Public safety staffing and equipment have ranked near the top of residents’ concerns in city meetings, and the new chiefs were selected in part for their stated focus on manpower, retention and day-to-day effectiveness.
The challenges ahead are familiar ones for older industrial cities in Mobile County. Grant funding for police hiring is competitive, fire department manpower requirements grow with the city’s stock of aging structures, and recruitment must compete with larger departments nearby that can offer higher starting pay. Both chiefs said partnerships with county, state and federal agencies — from drug task forces to mutual aid agreements — would be part of their strategy to stretch resources further.
Ephriam said the city would continue backing both departments as they pursue their staffing goals, and he thanked the interim leaders who kept the departments running during the search. For now, the city enters a new chapter with two permanent chiefs, two council-approved contracts and, for the first time in more than two years, a clear line of command at both City Hall’s emergency services.
Looking ahead
With permanent chiefs installed, attention in Prichard turns to the departments’ day-to-day challenges. The police department continues to operate with patrol staffing stretched across shifts covering the city’s neighborhoods and commercial corridors, while the fire department balances suppression duties with a steady volume of emergency medical calls. Both chiefs said their early months in the permanent roles would be devoted to assessing equipment needs, reviewing response data and building out the grant applications that could fund new positions.
City Council members who attended the ceremony said they would judge the new leadership on measurable results: crime statistics, response times, retention of trained personnel and the condition of the departments’ vehicle fleets. Both chiefs acknowledged the scrutiny and said they welcomed it, arguing that clear expectations from the council and the mayor would help them make the case for the resources their departments need.
For residents, the immediate change will be subtle — familiar faces confirmed in the top jobs rather than new policies announced from the podium. But officials hope the psychological shift is just as important: departments that spent two years waiting for permanent leadership now have it, along with a mayor who stood before a packed council chamber and told them, at last, that the wait was over.
The swearing-in ends the city’s longest public safety leadership search in recent memory, and both chiefs said they intend to be the last interim appointment Prichard’s departments see for a long while — starting with making sure their own tenures outlast the turbulence that preceded them.