Edinburgh officials established a police K9 fund as the town moves forward with plans to get its first K9 since the 1980s.
The town council voted 3-0, with two members absent, Monday night to pass an ordinance to create a K9 unit fund, which will be used to deposit both past and future donations for the program. The fund will also be used to deposit other revenues and to disburse funds relating to K9 units, officials say.
The town council had previously passed a resolution earlier this month announcing their desire to establish a K9 program.
Last month, Edinburgh Police Chief Doyne Little came before the town council to request permission to reestablish the department’s K9 program and to get donations to help fund it. The need for the program’s reestablishment stems from the town’s problems with drug crime. Drug crime has been up and down for several years, but lately, it’s been a steady rise, Little said last month
Having a K9 will be beneficial as the department deals with the drug problem. Since 2020, the town has had at least 76 drug arrests for methamphetamine, 27 for heroin, 23 for cocaine and 83 for marijuana. These numbers only include Johnson County arrests, he said.
The last time the department had a K9 was in the 1980s, and since then the department has relied on requesting a K9 from neighboring agencies. However, these K9s are not always available, or close by, Little said.
Recent court decisions have made it more difficult for the department to just wait for a K9 from another agency. If an officer does a traffic stop and they suspect someone has drugs, they only have a reasonable amount of time — sometimes up to 10 minutes — to get a K9 there to conduct a search during the stop. If the officer issues a ticket and is done writing it before the K9 is there, then the officer will have to let them go, he said.
The town council passed a resolution earlier this month announcing their desire to establish a K9 program.
On Monday, the town council voted to waive the ordinance through second reading to establish the fund immediately, giving the town a place to start depositing donations almost immediately. The department has received $26,800 in donations so far, with another person interested in donating another $5,000 and another three people expressing interest in donating, Little said.
People from not only the town but from Indianapolis and areas as far as Anderson have asked if they could donate to the program, he said.
“It’s still going. It’s amazing, this support (is),” Little said.
The next step for the establishment of the program is to assign an officer to be the K9’s handler, along with that changing that officer’s pay and duties. Officials will also need to choose the K9 provider from quotes they received earlier this year, said Dustin Huddleston, town attorney.
The first quote was for about $19,255 for a Denver, Indiana-based company, and about $16,000 for a Columbus-based company, officials said last month.
Edinburgh police are still taking donations for the K9 fund and will continue to do so in the future. The goal is for the department to fundraise and accept donations for the program, with the department’s budget being a backup for expenses, Little said.
To donate to the fund, bring checks to the Edinburgh Police Department, 200 S. Main St. Donors are encouraged to write a note saying “Attention: Chief Little,” he said.
In other business, the town council unanimously voted to convert two intersections into four-way stops citing the need to make the intersections safer. Under the ordinance passed Monday, the intersection of Pleasant and Campbell streets and the intersection of Shelby and Clay streets will become four-way stops.
The Shelby and Clay street intersection is being changed at the request of the town’s board of zoning appeals. During the BZA’s June 1 meeting, the board heard a variance request from a property owner who lives on the corner of Clay Street and Shelby Street. The property owner had installed a fence that did not meet the town’s requirements for visual clearance, and the BZA recommended that the variance be awarded based on the condition that the council changes the ordinance to make the intersection a four-way stop, Planning Director Wade Watson said during a town council meeting on June 13.
The primary concern at this intersection is the amount of school traffic that drives along Shelby Street as parents go to and from Eastside Elementary School. There have been accidents at the intersection in the past, Watson said.
With a lot of traffic on Shelby Street, the traffic on Clay Street is not visible from the cars that are parked near the intersection. Putting a stop sign will slow traffic down and prevent people from parking adjacent to the intersection. Parking there blocks the southbound traffic from seeing onto Clay Street, Watson said.
“The BZA gave their unanimous support on making that a four-way stop,” he said. “It comes with the full support from our street department, our police department and the planning department,” Watson said.
During the June 13 meeting, the town council expressed support for the measure and town officials asked to make an additional intersection a four-way stop: Pleasant Street and Campbell Street. People have asked about it becoming a four-way stop for a while, Street Superintendent Clark McCollum said Monday.
”I’ve had a couple of people ask over the last few years about it,” McCollum said.
The town council expedited the ordinance on Monday by waiving it through second reading.
Daily Journal reporter Angelica Gonzalez Morales contributed to this report.
