Open Letter to the residents of Fairhope:

Recently, it has come to my attention that the Fairhope Police Department has been doing funeral procession escorts with on-duty personnel. In order to accomplish these weekly events, all routine calls for service and patrol activities have been put on hold for up to an hour, per event. In fact, as recently as March 28, a local funeral home wanted this department to provide on-duty personnel to assist with traffic for three hours. We advised them that we could not provide this service due to the lack of manpower and other daily demands, and suggested instead that they utilize an off-duty officer to facilitate this; they declined.

There are other obvious and serious issues associated with what has been the past policy of this department in regard to on-duty funeral procession escorts. Often times, immediately prior to or during the actual escorts, units that are assigned to these details have been interrupted and dispatched to in-progress or emergency calls for service. The negative result is that they have had to abandon the event partially or all of the vehicles at one time, thereby creating a grave liability for those continuing in the procession, commuting on our roadways, and the city itself (this liability has been confirmed by the League of Municipalities’ public safety consultant).

In addition, our police escorts are using police cars vs. police motorcycles. Motorcycles provide maneuverability, which a sedan cannot provide. When escorting on many of our two-way streets, where on-coming or continuous traffic has to pull off of the pavement and onto any shoulder of the roadway, which some of our streets do not provide, sedans have been forced into near collisions.

Effective May 1, it is my intent to cease all on-duty funeral procession escorts. Because we do not have motorcycles that facilitate safer movement for our officers and residents alike, we will not be participating in escorting funeral processions in an off-duty capacity as well. I cannot justify someone getting injured or worse because we do not have the proper tools or the necessary on-duty manpower to facilitate safe escorts. At the same time, we will remain sensitive to our neighbors and friends who have lost a loved one and, therefore, allow other law enforcement agencies or private escorting businesses the opportunity to provide these services effectively and safely. In cases where military and public safety personnel, heads of state, family members, city employees and dignitaries are concerned, we will continue to participate as a display of our individual and collective respect and gratitude, but not in an escort role.

Chief, Fairhope Police Department