This is an opinion column.

The question is really this simple: Do you believe Steven Reed?

I want to believe the mayor, but I just don’t know.

Over the weekend, clips of a covert recording were leaked on social media. In a conversation recorded without his knowledge three years ago, Reed, the mayor of Montgomery, said some things he probably wishes now that he didn’t.

That he didn’t need Black voters as long as he had enough white support.

That if white people take their money to the suburbs, Montgomery won’t have anything “green” to show for itself.

That he didn’t really know anybody who works at Maxwell-Gunter Air Force base, his region’s largest employer.

And he probably regrets the salty language.

But Reed isn’t apologizing. Quite the opposite, on Tuesday, the mayor went on the offensive.

In a press conference, Reed accused the head of a Montgomery nonprofit, Charles Lee, of shaking him down in the wake of George Floyd’s murder three years ago.

It was a tenuous moment for the city and the country, and it enraged him, he says, when the activist tried to shake him down for $30,000 promised to the nonprofit by the previous administration.

It made Reed mad, and the mayor implied that under other circumstances his response might have been physical.

“It was something that really to be honest with you caught in the questions of my manhood, and probably outside of this position, I would have taken a different approach to someone, during that time, bringing that up,” Reed said. “And so what you heard was verbal frustration and anger.”

Reed said he met with the district attorney after he learned the conversation had been recorded, but he decided not to prosecute after others had advised him not to.

He also said he’s now changed his mind and will press charges, alleging extortion.

After the conversation with Lee, Reed said he went with Lee to E.D. Nixon Elementary School, where they met with community members who were upset and frustrated in the national backlash to Floyd’s murder at the hands of police.

“And we gave a speech that I put together about understanding the need for more trust and transparency between our police department and our community,” Reed recalled in the press conference.

And that’s where my incredulity bubbled up.

I’m not that distressed by what Reed said on recordings.

This sort of thing happens all the time in politics. An activist or community leader gives a politician their support and once that official makes it into office, they expect something in return. Sometimes they get it. Other times they don’t.

And sometimes things go really sour.

Reed wants us to believe his version of that meeting, and he had me — up until he started talking about transparency. It was like a bucket of ice water for an alarm clock.

Because here’s the thing. When it comes to violent encounters with police, the city Reed leads has not been transparent.

Not before he got there.

Not after.

And if Reed would stand in front of a room of angry citizens make one empty promise then, how are we to believe him today?

As my colleague Ashley Remkus has written about extensively, the Montgomery Police Department has fought transparency in one case for four years.

In 2018, police responded to a call about a potential burglary in an empty house, where they found Joseph Pettaway hiding under a bed. Pettaway’s family said he had been working on the house and sometimes stayed there.

What we know after that comes from details in a lawsuit against the city.

During the call, police released a K-9, Niko, despite Pettaway not having fought them or having resisted arrest, a federal judge found later. Niko bit Pettaway in the groin and refused to release him until choked by the officers.

The officers joked about Niko getting a bite, according to bodycam footage described in the lawsuit.

After being transported to a hospital, Pettaway was declared dead, having bled to death from the dog bite.

It took two years for Pettaway’s family to see the bodycam footage from that night, and only then after they and their legal counsel agreed not to share it publicly.

The family has said the public deserves to see and needs to see how their loved one died.

But the city of Montgomery has fought or ignored requests to release those recordings. And it won’t release the Pettaway family from the confidentiality agreement.

In court, the city’s lawyers say they fear the public’s reaction if they saw what happened.

That’s not a reason to keep it secret. That’s the reason to make it public.

Transparency, this ain’t.

If anyone wants to be mad at Reed for something, be mad about that.

Reed wasn’t mayor when Pettaway died, but he took office less than a year later and he’s served as mayor throughout the lawsuit.

He’s promised transparency, but so far his administration hasn’t delivered when it was difficult to do so.

Obviously, there’s concern about backlash — political and physical — should people see what their police department has done.

But as city leaders in Memphis recently demonstrated, there’s a way to deal with those risks — by being open and accountable.

With leadership.

That’s been missing in Montgomery.

I want to believe Reed, when he says he’s the victim of a “hatchet job” and a “side show.” I can look past the cussing and chalk off the comments about Montgomery’s racial politics to a frustrated young leader dealing with a city in transition.

But first he needs to show he can trust us with the truth.

All of it.