ALABAMA – Police officers in Alabama will soon be allowed to tint the windows on their personal vehicles darker than is allowed for anyone else in the state.
Gov. Kay Ivey this week signed HB332, legislation that makes an exemption in the Alabama window-tinting law for current and retired federal, state and local law enforcement. The change takes effect in August.
Rep. Connie Rowe, R-Jasper, a former police chief, sponsored the legislation. She said the purpose is to help protect the privacy of current and former law enforcement officers and their families. She said allowing them to have darker window tint could make them less identifiable or recognizable while off duty to people they have encountered in dangerous or tense cases on the job.
Rowe said she got the idea for the legislation from a now-retired federal agent who became a close friend during her days as the chief in Jasper, a northwest Alabama town that’s home to about 13,000 people in Walker County. She did not reveal the agent’s identity, citing his work on sensitive criminal cases.
Rowe said the agent recently decided to retire in Alabama and asked her whether she would sponsor a window tint bill for law enforcement. He told her about window tinting laws in other states, like Florida, which Rowe believes provides exemptions for police officers’ personal vehicles in some instances.
“I had never heard of it,” Rowe told AL.com. “But I said if it’s something that’s in other states and desirable for law enforcement, let’s see if we can pass it here in Alabama.”
Under current Alabama law window tint is not allowed on front windshields and limits how dark tint can be on side windows and back windshields. Violators can be ticketed.
Under the new law, the limitations don’t “apply to any personal use vehicles belonging to and occupied by any active or retired state, local, or federal law enforcement officer.”
To qualify for the exemption, officers will have to carry their law enforcement ID.
Rowe said she was “as surprised as anyone” that the bill passed without opposition. She said she was glad to have kept her promise to the federal agent to sponsor the bill.
“I felt like I owed him the opportunity to try to pass that bill,” Rowe said.
