I'm on the west bay. Fairhope is on the east bay and is a very good neighborhood...it is often at the top or close to the top of an 'ideal' place to live, retire and etc. The county voted 68% for George Bush.
Anyway, I don't much follow the local news and only know about this incident from reading FR.
Fairhope is to Mobile as Sausalito is to San Francisco.
That makes it even more interesting that this sort of thing is going on there.