When Dylan Prather was a student at Columbus North High School in 2014, his senior project was to raise money for the purchase of a new police dog for the Columbus Police Department.
Now that he is a college student and a dispatcher for the Bartholomew County Emergency Operations Center, he has taken on a new challenge to purchase a second police dog for the Bartholomew County Sheriff’s Department.
Prather approached the County Council at a work session earlier this week, with his plan to raise just over $18,000 to purchase the new dog.
He said the county needs another dog to perform drug searches in the jail and other tasks that can’t be adequately covered by the county’s one dog.
County Auditor Barb Hackman said the county already has a fund set up to received donations and those incoming money could be earmarked for the police dog project.
Prather said he is still working on a timeline for the fundraising effort.
Prather’s high school efforts led to donations that allowed the city of Columbus to purchase its third police dog, Max. Max was recently assigned to a new handle, Officer Jeremy Jones, after his previous partner left the force for a job in a different community.