Haleigh Cummings Update 23 March

Officers searching on the ground, air and water in the hours and days following Haleigh Cummings disappearance faced many obstacles. The woods were thick, the days were long, and the leads were coming in by the hundreds. Another challenge facing law enforcement on the water was knowing what house they were behind.

As the law stands right now, homeowners are required to post their street address on the front of their homes for emergency service use. That law does not extend to the back of the house or docks where law enforcement on boats could benefit from seeing exactly where they are.

“Precious seconds could be lost, because they’d have to dock the boat, run to the front---now they’d have an address, but they still wouldn’t have a street name, so it is frustrating to us,” said Lt. George Pottorf of Florida Fish & Wildlife.
Pottorf was on the water the day Haleigh disappeared and says one of his biggest problems was pinpointing his exact location on the water.

“We were receiving a lot of citizen tips where we had to respond to different locations.
Everything from the first day where there were actual sightings up to a point where people were seeing barrels, and plastic bags floating and every other type of item…and we had to respond to every one of those items,” said Pottorf.

Right now, Pottorf is going dock to dock passing out fliers to anyone who will read them asking all dock owners to please post their addresses on those docks. He says even though it is not a law right now, he’d like counties to look into changing local ordinances to make it a requirement.

“Even if we don’t have 100 percent compliance, if we had addresses every so many docks it’s going to help us substantially locate and area in an emergency situation,” said Pottorf.

At least the police can admit that they had issues with the search. And they are actually taking the steps to improve the situation. And it is a simple solution that dock owners can do anywhere. An address would come in handy in many situations. You never know when there is going to be a fire or medical emergency.

Other Haleigh Cummings Updates
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