He was an Army veteran and graduated from the National Academy of the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Southern Police Institute at the University of Louisville.

It started when three young members of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee—Charles Sherrod, Cordell Reagon, and Charles Jones—came to Albany for a voter-registration drive.

Consequently, tensions ran high in the community and the police department got involved to suppress the marches, sit-ins, and other peaceful acts of defiance.

[4] Previous movements in other cities had often relied on images of police brutality, broadcast nationwide, showing violent actions being taken towards peaceful demonstrators.

[8] After learning Dr. King's intentions, Pritchett began teaching the Albany police department how to effectively deal with the non-violent protesters.

The media played a big role during the civil rights movement, and with the nation watching, Pritchett was concerned with how people would view the city police tactics.

[12] Therefore, Pritchett contacted all jails within a seventy-mile radius to ensure that they had enough room to accommodate individuals held in the mass arrests that took place.

[5] Other than the arrests and relocation of arrestees to neighboring jails, the Albany police refrained from other violent action against the African American activists.

Laurie Pritchett emphasized how his control was only in the city of Albany and his duties didn't include supervising other towns' jails.

In Pritchett's own words, he mentioned, "Slater King’s wife went down and while she was outside the fence, she was pregnant at the time, one of the deputy sheriffs of that county did kick her.

In December 1961, soon after King's arrest, protests were temporarily discontinued after city officials promised that the bus and train stations would no longer be segregated.

Officials further promised that the hundreds of protestors would be released from jail and that biracial committees would be formed to further address the segregation issues in Albany.

King later expressed his indignation at Pritchett's use of "the moral means of nonviolence to maintain the immoral ends of racial injustice.

"[12] Pritchett claimed that if he found himself as leaning towards one of the group identities that he would not be doing his job and that he was told to enforce the laws of the state and to not be consumed by the political and social issues that were going on around him.