CRISFIELD, Md.- Crisfield Chief of Police Michael Tabor received funding approval from the City Council Wednesday to hire additional police officers. Tabor said the additional officers are needed to keep crime down.
The Crisfield City Council approved $40,000 in funding for the police department to hire additional part-time officers. Crime is down in Crisfield and the city is ranked as Maryland's safest city, according to the FBI annual crime report.
Tabor said more officers are needed to continue to keep crime at bey.
"Crisfield's become Maryland's safest city by policing and we'd like to keep it that way by keeping up our enforcement efforts," Tabor said.
Cocklyn McCready is a long time resident of Crisfield and said the cChief knows what's best for the city.
"If the chief wants to add more officers then he knows what he's doing because he's been here long enough to know what's going on in the city. I think you always need more officers; I don't know how many we have but we can always use more," McCready said.
Terry Worthy disagrees that more police are needed.
"More cops is just more money and why do we need more cops? I mean it's not that many problems in Crisfield," Worthy said.
Tabor said adding additional officers to the force will help relieve excessive overtime and officer fatigue. Most people agreed, relieving overtime and hiring part-time officers will help the city.
"Why not add more officer's to take away some of that overtime and let that overtime you're giving away to those officers be a salary to another officer," McCready said.
Tabor said he plans to hire the new part-time officers in July.
