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THE DEPARTMENT'S COURSE · AS OF NOVEMBER 2026
Walkerton's law today is a police department, not a marshal's office in style, and the modern record names its heads at three points across twenty years — enough to anchor the line's current end, not enough to print the succession whole, and the shortfall is stated here rather than filled. In April 2005 the South Bend Tribune found the town grieving for one of its own (the Verkler paragraph below), and the officer it quoted as the town's voice was Police Chief Richard Bliley, then twenty-seven years a police officer, working alongside two members of the family the town was mourning. A decade later the department enters the appellate record in its working clothes: in Isbell v. State (Ind. Ct. App. 2016), Assistant Police Chief Charles Kulp was dispatched on July 2, 2015, to the Walkerton Municipal Building, where he took the statement that sustained a Class A misdemeanor battery conviction, affirmed on appeal. Kulp stands in the office again in a February 2024 federal court filing, which identifies him as the department's assistant chief in the course of dismissing a civil suit against the department. As of the most recent official-adjacent record reached for this build — a federal energy-program fleet study of the department published in 2026 — the chief of police is Matt Schalliol, quoted on the department's adoption of a pursuit-rated electric patrol vehicle under a Michiana Area Council of Governments pilot, the car assigned to the assistant chief for road testing. The department the study describes is "a small but busy force serving a town of approximately 2,000 residents"; no official published roster or strength figure stands in the record reached, and the town's published directory stands in the closing article as the settler for both.
One family runs through the department's modern record the way one case runs through the county's, and the leg prints it whole because the record prints it whole. When Mishawaka Patrolman Bryan Scott Verkler, twenty-seven, was shot and killed on duty in Mishawaka on December 13, 2003 — with Corporal Thomas Roberts, answering a shots-fired call on Battell Street, the gunman then taking his own life; the case is the Mishawaka build's whole — he was a Walkerton son: raised in the town, a John Glenn High School athlete, his family still living and working in Walkerton when the Tribune came in April 2005 to write about the town's grief. His father Randy Verkler and his brother Brett Verkler were Walkerton officers — Chief Bliley worked with both — and it is Brett Verkler whom the appellate record catches at work seven years later, covering the backyard of a Walkerton house during the 2010 siege in the Rozinski article below, helping the woman inside to safety, and driving the surrendered gunman to the Walkerton police station and on to the county jail. The Officer Down Memorial Page's line for Bryan Verkler closes the family's record at its official strength: his survivors include his parents and brother, and "his father and brother also served in law enforcement." No Walkerton officer stands on the Officer Down Memorial Page or the Indiana law-enforcement memorial rolls as searched for this build — the department has buried a son, in the record reached, but never one of its own on its own duty — and that negative is printed in the modern-record article with the rest of the standing negatives.
Sources: South Bend Tribune, "Tears, fond memories flow for hometown officer down," April 25, 2005 (Chief Richard Bliley; Randy and Brett Verkler on the town force), as carried by Police1; Isbell v. State, No. 71A03-1509-CR-1333 (Ind. Ct. App. Sept. 22, 2016) (Assistant Chief Charles Kulp, July 2, 2015); Treadwell v. Walkerton Police Department, No. 3:24-CV-226 (N.D. Ind. Oct. 1, 2024) (Kulp identified as assistant chief, February 2024; the department held not a suable entity and the claims dismissed); Drive Electric USA / Michiana Area Council of Governments fleet success story, Walkerton Police Department (2026) (Chief Matt Schalliol; the department's size described; the assistant chief's assignment); Officer Down Memorial Page, Patrolman Bryan Scott Verkler, Mishawaka Police Department, end of watch December 13, 2003.