Eagle Scout Project helps police K9's

[RememberSchiff 3663]

IMHO, more of this .. helping others

The Eagle Scout project began in the fall of 2019 as an idea to raise $1,000 to buy a ballistic vest for a K-9 in the Unified Police Department. One bake sale and silent auction later, and the response was overwhelming.

“The kid worked his butt off and actually ended up buying two [vests],” UPD Sgt. Melody Gray said. “Both of those dogs now are going to be well protected and that’s really important for us.”

Tirrell arranged for the manufacturer to come to the police department and size the dogs. And Thursday he presented two, $1,000 ballistic vests to Tango and Nitro.

“UPD has lost two K-9s in the line of duty so this becomes incredibly meaningful for us to have somebody that cares that much,” Gray said.

And it turns out, Tirrell had his own reasons for caring that much.

“Growing up I’ve always wanted to be a police officer in the K-9 division,” he said. “Since the dogs protect us they need to have something to protect them.”

https://www.ksl.com/article/46770595/eagle-scout-donates-ballistic-vest-for-upd-k-9s

 

[elitts 464]

I find this particular issue incredibly frustrating.  I realize that a vest for a K9 dog is only of limited use, but given the fact that a fully trained police dog costs something like 15k-20k, why the heck are police departments even operating a K9 unit if they can't afford the $1400 vest?  I can't help thinking that the issue is mostly the fact that the PD knows they can go hold their hand out to the community talking about how much at risk the poor little dog is and get some do-gooder to fork over the money rather than having to pay for it themselves.

My rant aside, I have to wonder how that project got approved when you aren't supposed to do a fundraiser for an eagle project.  I mean, the fact that he gave them vests instead of cash doesn't really change the fact that his project was simply to raise money.