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Banks is APD 'reporter'

• A Bayou La Batre, Ala., native, Phyllis Banks has been owrking in Albany since 1998.

J.D. Sumner

ALBANY — Phyllis Banks is no stranger to pressure.

As a weekend anchor and reporter for Albany’s Fox affiliate WFXL, she often found herself serving as a renaissance reporter, shooting, editing and writing her own work — all before taking the anchor’s chair for their 10 p.m. broadcasts.

But Banks now finds herself in an ironic role reversal. Instead of manning the anchor desk, the Alabama native is on the opposite end of the camera.

Managing a police desk and all the information that comes across it, she serves as a liaison between the local media’s often insatiable appetite for news and what is arguably the city’s largest news making machine.

As the public relations director and media manager for the Albany Police Department, Banks has assumed a role that, on the surface, appears to be a completely different animal from her days as a reporter. But, according to Banks, the two jobs aren’t that vastly different.

“The way I look at things, my job here is just like my job back at Fox,” Banks said. “I view the chief as my news director and myself as the police department’s reporter. It’s my job to find out what’s happening and to be as accurate and timely as I can in getting it out. So really there isn’t a lot of difference.”

Whether walking the halls of the Law Enforcement Center or through a crime scene, Banks’ life now in Albany is a little different that that in her hometown of Bayou La Batre, Ala.

“I grew up there not really knowing what I was going to do,” Banks said. “I kinda decided one day that I really wanted to be in radio, so I got a job in radio and interned at the Fox affiliate in Mobile and I was hooked.”

Banks found a good fit as a reporter, because she said that she has the prerequisite of anyone looking to go into the field: She was nosy

“I just loved getting out there and meeting folks and finding out what was going on in the community,” Banks said. “Especially on the police beat — It’s just always been something I’ve been drawn to.”

After moving to the Good Life City in 1998 to be closer to her sister, Banks found work at WFXL as a weekend reporter and slowly climbed the ranks, eventually becoming the station’s weekend news anchor and reporter.

Now Banks has become the face of the Albany Police Department and their first civilian public affairs director.

“I’m still just in awe of how things really work over here,” Banks said. “As a reporter, you get to see how they work on the outside, but now I’m getting to see the inner workings, and it’s just amazing how they can go from an incident to an arrest in just a matter of days,” Banks said. “The teamwork around here is just unbelievable.”

Banks believes that her media background has helped both the police department and local reporters understand each other more clearly so that the public can get the information they’re entitled to without compromising investigations.

Inheriting a department often viewed by reporters as being tight-lipped and rigid, Banks said that she’s made it her mission to change the public perception of the department by educating officers about the way members of the media work, while explaining to reporters the mindset of investigators.

Her first couple of weeks sent Banks through a trial by fire as the department found itself embroiled in a sexual harassment complaint against an officer, a possible vehicular homicide at a local restaurant and a double-homicide at a hotel.

She says it was only the support of her two daughters, one 13 and the other 15, and the divine love from God that she made it through it.

“They’re my cheerleaders,” Banks said, as tears began streaming down her face. “They’re just so supportive when I have to leave at midnight and go to a crime scene or be a little late getting off because something breaks late in the afternoon.”

Banks also represents the APD on the Crimestoppers Board and will be playing an active role in the Citizen’s Advisory Council, where she says she hopes to help the community become even more involved with the APD.

“I think if the average citizen were privy to what police officers go through, the work they have to do and the things they have to deal with, I think they would have a whole different outlook on the APD,” Banks said.

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