No major issues over weekend
Published 6:39 pm Monday, March 9, 2015
By Blake Deshazo
The Selma Times-Journal
As Selma Chief of Police William Riley stood on the Edmund Pettus Bridge Sunday looking down Broad Street, he was in awe of the number of people in Selma.
“When I looked down the bridge all the way down Broad Street all I could see was people,” Riley said, as he sat behind his desk Monday morning. “As a law enforcement officer, you look around and you think, ‘Wow.’ And you say to yourself, ‘I sure hope everything goes well and people act accordingly.’ And they did. They acted accordingly.”
On a weekend where so much could have gone wrong, everything went according to plan.
The Selma Police Department made just two arrests during jubilee weekend, and both of them were for disorderly conduct.
“[The weekend] was uneventful, and I think that it was good for the city of Selma,” Riley said. “This is my seventh jubilee, and by far this was the friendliest.”
According to Lt. John Brock with the Selma Police Department, more than 200 law enforcement officers on the federal, state and local levels assisted them during the weekend.
“We couldn’t have done this without the outside agencies,” Brock said. “We could not have done this without their help. There is no way.”
Chief Riley gave a nod to the number of agencies that pitched in to assist.
“I am so grateful to my fellow chiefs and sheriffs in Alabama because when I called … they immediately responded and said, ‘Chief, I’ll send you what I can,’ and they did,” Riley said. “The officers did an outstanding job.”
Estimates from the police and fire departments had more than 40,000 people inside the area blocked off for President Barack Obama’s speech Saturday. Lt. Brock estimated between 80,000 and 90,000 people in Selma Sunday for the bridge crossing.
“That is absolutely amazing that you can put that many people in our town and not have an incident at all,” said Selma Fire Chief Mike Stokes. “That is a testament to these guys in public safety for doing a great job and carrying out the plan and just doing things right.”
Stokes said things went according to plan for the Fire Department as well. The only incidents they had to deal with were medical assistance for people getting overheated Saturday and Sunday.
“We took the amount of time that we had to prepare for this, and we carried out a plan and it worked,” Stokes said.
According to Riley, it will take a couple of days to compile a full report for the weekend’s incidents, but overall, he said no major incidents or complaints happened during the historic weekend.