Last Thursday's public meeting played out much like the professional wrestling bouts at Mobile Civic Center, the kind in which a masked combatant with dragon tattoos fights dirty against a handsome protagonist with butterfly tattoos.

In one corner of the ring was the Mobile County Sheriff's Office, represented by spokeswoman Lori Myles. She cogently and firmly made the case for a new alert system, developed by the sheriff's department, that will make major crime reports available online -- immediately -- to anyone with a smart phone or laptop. The project, known as My Neighborhood, will take data from Mobile County's 911 emergency call center and plot it on a map at the sheriff's department website. We'll be able to know right away when crimes like rape, murder, assault or car thefts are reported in our neighborhoods. For a nominal fee, the system will even alert you by email or text when a major crime is reported near your residence.

In the other corner Thursday was Mobile Police Chief Micheal Williams, along with a tag-team of top brass from his department. They were there to attack the sheriff's department project, and their logic went like this: When crime victims initially phone in reports, they sometimes misidentify the exact nature of the crime. A burglary might be called a robbery; an assault might be called a rape. On rare occasion, the caller could even be making an entirely false report. "We do not want our citizens to be frightened unnecessarily because of some of the flawed data," said the chief, who wants to delay reporting the crime until its exact nature has been verified.

Ontario Lawyer prowled a Mobile neighborhood for five days after committing a rape the police had not informed the news media about.

Mobile County residents should all be delighted and horrified by the upshot of this encounter. Lori Myles emerged victorious: The 911 call center's district board agreed that the project should proceed, and the ingenious new alert system is scheduled for launch sometime this week.

That's the happy part.

But how could a police chief not grasp the value of such a system? As AL.com's Robert McClendon reported last week, less than 1 percent of the phoned-in reports about the scariest crimes (like rape and murder) are likely to be inaccurate. Yet the chief would deny the public this real-time information to spare us from being "frightened unnecessarily?"

Contempt for public disclosure has emanated from the Mobile Police Department since Sam Cochrane retired as our police chief and became the sheriff of Mobile County in 2006. Cochrane sees informing the public as a key part of public safety, be it good news or bad. He appreciates that an informed public is a forewarned public, which is precisely what the My Neighborhood project is all about.

Since Cochrane's departure, the Mobile Police Department has released precious little information about crimes, consistently frustrating the media and blinding the public. This sea change became infamously clear in 2008, when the police department kept the public in the dark for five days about a home-invasion rape while the suspect prowled the same neighborhood on Mobile's southside.

Most recently, the police chief has refused to give reporter McClendon the department's policy with regard to officers moonlighting, clearly a matter of public record. We have nothing against police officers working extra jobs; that helps them to feed their families. But the public deserves to know how the department manages (or does not manage) that practice, which is ripe for abuse.

The most recent FBI crime stats, as reported by AL.com columnist John Archibald last November, peg Mobile at No. 17 in the nation and No. 1 in the state in violent crime rates; No. 17 in the nation and No. 2 in the state in murder rates; and No. 11 in the nation and No. 1 in the state in property crime rates.

This poor showing could be a statistical anomaly. Or it could be because the Mobile Police Department was more scrupulous about reporting crime to the FBI during that period than other police departments. The FBI's stats are often quoted by departments whose crime numbers are declining, and dismissed by those whose numbers are rising.

But one thing is certain: Mobile's crime rate will be a main topic in this summer's mayoral election.

Concerns expressed here about Chief Williams should in no way reflect on the rest of the Mobile Police Department: We Mobilians love our cops.

But our Top Cop should keep us informed about crime, not hide it.

This editorial was written by Mike Marshall, AL.com director of statewide commentary, for the Mobile Editorial Board.