Former Delmar PD Chief says town knew of understaffing 10 years ago

DELMAR, Md – Almost six years after leaving Delmar Police Former Chief Hal Saylor is speaking out about understaffing issues that he says played a role in Cpl. Keith Heacook’s death.

“I guess just neglect, there’s no other way you can put it,” said Saylor. “You want to just beat it right down to what the facts were. We had one officer working along at night, on a Saturday night and he had no backup his backup was 20-25 minutes away.”

Last month Cpl. Heacook lost his life responding to a domestic call alone. But according to Saylor, the alarms had been sounded on officers responding alone well before Heacook was killed.  Saylor citing two independent reviews that were done during his time in office, the most recent one coming roughly 10 years ago.

“Both of them said that you know, always two men to a shift, you can’t go through a study and pick and choose what you want, you paid for it lets follow what they recommended,” said Saylor.

But after sitting down with the mayors of both Delmar Maryland and Delaware they say they never intended for officers to be out on calls alone, and that to their knowledge that wasn’t happening.

So why didn’t they know? Why was the department understaffed after reports called for more hires? We asked the mayors that.

To hear their answers and to hear what Chief Ivan Barkley has to say about these issues, tune in Monday night 5/24 to the 47 ABC Newshour.