City council pays respect to Officer Steven Green

MOBILE, Ala. (WALA) - Mobile's city council remembered Officer Steven Green during its meeting this morning and said a prayer for his grieving family.

The first city council meeting since Officer Green was killed taking a suspect to jail opened with a moment of silence as council members join hands.

Council President Reggie Copeland said news of the young officer’s murder moved him to start a prayer chain for his family.

Copeland also said it’s not his place to question what went wrong.

"That's not my position. I will leave that to the police department. They will let us know after they've finished their investigation of what happened," Copeland said.

City council members offered their condolences to the Green family and expressed their gratitude for his service.

In the wake of Green's death, James Lilley, a retired city of Mobile fire fighter, asked council members to re-examine the pension plan for a line of duty death.

"Because he died of his injuries, he will be left out in the cold by the pension plan. With the mayor and city council approval, it can be tweaked to include a line of duty death benefit," Lilley said.

Lilley is president of the Mobile Police and Fire Pension Fund.

Mayor Jones said the issue should have been taken up by the pension plan years ago, but suspects it will be looked at closely now to see if something can be done to adjust things.

He also said his focus isn't on what happened that allowed suspect Lawrence Wallace, Jr. to come out of his handcuffs and stabbed Officer Green to death inside Metro jail's sally port.

"Right now, we are actually focused on the service of Officer Green and his family, basically our goal for the last few days. Once that is over, the chief and people within the department as well as sheriff's department will do a review of everything that took place," Jones said.

Copeland has asked the public to turn their vehicles head lights on all day Wednesday, February 8, to show their support for Green's family.