ENTIRE COMMUNITY HAS A STAKE IN PRICHARD'S FUTURE

THE MOST innocent of bystanders -- a 6-year-old boy on his own front porch
- -- is the most tragic victim of two days of violence involving police
officers in Prichard.

The grandfather of young Kearis Bonham, who was raising the child while his
mother went to college in Birmingham, says the family was used to ducking
whenever the shooting started in the neighborhood containing the Queens
Court Apartments. But during an apparently premeditated ambush of Prichard
police at the apartments Wednesday evening, Kearis caught a bullet in the head.

Officials say the ambush was in retaliation for the Tuesday shooting of
three young men by two undercover Prichard narcotics detectives. The next
day, three officers were lured to Queens Court by a false report that shots
had been fired. One was wounded by gunfire, another by flying glass as
bullets riddled the patrol car.

The show of force by Mobile police, Alabama State Troopers and Mobile
County sheriff's deputies after Wednesday's shooting was necessary, given
that armed criminals had just killed a little boy while ambushing and
wounding police officers. The presence of these agencies underscores what
all county residents should remember -- that Prichard's many problems
affect everyone.

This volatile situation must be contained as quickly as possible by
Prichard police with the assistance of other law enforcement agencies,
including the Mobile County district attorney's office. The extra police
forces also can protect the majority of Prichard residents, who are
law-abiding and condemn the violence as much as anyone outside the troubled
city.

Even as regional law enforcement agencies do everything possible to protect
the residents and back up the Prichard Police Department, a thorough,
public and independent investigation into the shootings by the narcotics
officers must be expedited.

Some witnesses in Alabama Village, where those shootings took place, say
the shootings were unprovoked and the young men who were shot were unarmed.
If that turns out to be the case, the officers must face appropriate
discipline.

Regardless of what the investigation reveals, however, citizens of
Prichard, as did citizens of Mobile after the June shootout between a
police officer and a drug suspect at the Roger Williams public housing
community, have a duty to remain calm and await the facts.

Prichard can no longer be ignored or casually condemned by Mobile County
residents who don't live there, don't do business there and have little
interaction with its citizens. Its history of economic failure and public
corruption is well documented. Even the reconstituted city government
cannot turn things around alone or overnight.

The leaders of other cities in Mobile County, the County Commission, law
enforcement agencies, legislators, the University of South Alabama,
churches, civic groups and businesses in and out of Prichard must take on
the challenge and responsibility of making the county's second largest city
a safe and productive community.

Not just because the county's second-largest city is a drain on the
region's resources -- although that is an important reason -- but because
Kearis Bonham should have had a chance to grow up.