Clothes2Order Home » Printing and Embroidery News » Police Hold T-Shirt Competition to Raise Funds for K-9 Bulletproof Vests

The K-9 unit of the South Jordan police force decided to sponsor a nationwide contest for people to design a new logo for their printed T-shirts and sweatshirts. In total there was 250 entries. The winner of the competition is a young man from Illinois. The logo will appear on the rear of the printed T-shirts and sweatshirts. A motto was designed by a St. Francis Xavier Regional School eighth-grader Jacqui Rodriguez which reads “Detect, Detain, Deter” and the Department was so impressed with the logo Rodriguez came up with they decided to use her entry as their motto which appears on the front of the apparel. The K-9 unit presented Rodriguez with a T-shirt from the K-9 unit, and a Certificate of Appreciation towards her contribution. She also received a gift certificate to TSI Outfitters as she likes outdoor activities.

The contest was initiated to help raise funds towards bulletproof vests for the search dogs. The unit uses dogs to help the police fight crime and the officers thought that Rodriguez's motto summed up the officer's jobs as handlers for the K-9 unit. “Detect, detain, and deter is exactly what we do when we are trying to detect and apprehend a suspect or detect drugs. There is just no better way to describe what we do” said Sergeant Allen Crist of the South Jordan Patrol and K-9 supervisor. The handlers wear bulletproof vests as they have to deal with homicide suspects and there is a variety of danger with every job they do. Therefore, they would like to get similar vests for the dogs in case they get injured. The K-9 unit has been very successful at its job and has apprehended many criminals, removed hundreds of pounds of dangerous drugs and helped find missing children. Crist says that the vests "are a little different from human vests because you have to allow the dog movement to run and jump.” The department has been around since the year 2000 and started with Cuffs, a narcotics detector dog who is now in retirement.