Protecting Canine Cops
February 16th, 2009 | by admin |In 2002, Susie Jean was watching a television newscast at her home in Douglasville, Ga. pop. 20,065, when she saw a horrific scene: a fleeing criminal fatally shooting a police dog.
“I had to do something,” says Jean, 51, who was grieving over the recent loss of her two beloved German shepherds.
The next day she contacted her local police department and learned that, like most police departments, it didn’t have money to equip its K-9 counterparts with bullet-resistant vests, which can cost more than $700 apiece. That’s when she decided to raise the money herself.
“I started with donation boxes at pet store counters and veterinary offices,” recalls Jean, who now lives in Socorro, N.M. pop. 8,877.
She then contacted Robert Yurman of Uniform Sales of America, a Georgia-based distributor of ballistic vests for dogs, and explained her plans to donate vests to police departments across the nation. “She was certainly doing a worthwhile venture,” Yurman says, “so we said we’d sell her the vests at our cost to help keep her costs down.”
Within two months Jean had raised enough money to purchase two vests for the Douglasville Police Department. Inspired to increase her fundraising efforts, she started a nonprofit organization called Vest ’N P.D.P. Police Dog Protection, and created the website www.vestnpdp.com to promote the cause. Word of her work spread among police departments, and vest requests began pouring in.
One such request came from David Carleton, 46, a deputy sheriff and dog handler in Forsyth County, N.C. Carleton met his German shepherd Blek while serving in Iraq in 2003. The dog, which specializes in explosives detection, wore a pack that carried Carleton’s ammunition. “I made a deal with him that if he kept me alive, then I’d take care of him when we came back,” Carleton says.
When he and Blek went to work for the sheriff’s department in 2006, a ballistics vest was part of Carleton’s uniform, but not Blek’s. So Carleton called Jean. “She pretty much took care of all the rest,” he says. Five weeks later the dog was parading around in a new Kevlar vest with his name embroidered on the side.