Plymouth Township Police Receives $9K Grant From Berks Co. Community Foundation

PLYMOUTH TOWNSHIP, PA — The Plymouth Township Police Department may soon have an upgraded K9 dog kennel thanks to the generosity of a community organization.

Police officials announced Thursday that they were the recipient of a $9,000 grant from the Richard Groff and Meda Kern K-9 Corps Endowment Fund, which is part of the Berks County Community Foundation.

The foundation says that grant dollars typically go to police department K9 units for things like the purchase of protective equipment, as well as costs of training and education for dog handlers.

Plymouth Township has three canine handlers in the unit: Officers Doug Wells, Jon Monaghan and Michael Watts. The supervisor of the unit, Lt. Doug Copestick, is the one who filled out the grant application.

Jason Brudereck, the director of communications for the Berks County Community Foundation, said that Plymouth Township Police initially applied for the grant so they could purchase a new K9 dog for the unit.

Brudereck said the department applied specifically for $9,000 and ended up being awarded the full amount. He also said Plymouth was the third-ever largest recipient for grantees since the
endowment fund was first created back in 2016 to aid K9 units in Berks County and contiguous Pennsylvania counties.

While the money was originally intended to be used to purchase a new dog, Copestick, the unit’s supervisor, told Patch that the money is now going to be used instead to update the existing dog kennel at the police department, since the current one is in disrepair.

“We’re in need of an updated kennel, that’s for sure,” Copestick said in an interview.

Copestick said the current kennel needs a new roof, new walls, some hardscaping work. When it rains, the kennel experiences flooding issues, so repair work needs to address those issues as well, he said.

“It’s expensive to have a K9 unit,” Copestick said.

Copestick was very thankful for the grant money since police department K9 units across Montgomery County and elsewhere are typically self-supported and can have financial stresses.

“I’m very thankful toward the Berks County Community Foundation,” he said.

Brudereck, the spokesman for the foundation, said a total of $88,000 in grants have been given to regional K9 units since the fund's inception.

He said the monetary amount that is given out depends upon what is available in any given year and how much each request is for.

"We kind of have to judge who gets what," Brudereck told Patch in an interview.

In the case of Plymouth Township, "they got everything they asked for," he said.

Brudereck said grant recipients must be fully accredited police departments with functioning K9 units. He said it's very common for area police departments to seek grant funding for K9 units
since these police department units are typically self-supported.

"We've gotten to know a lot about K9 units over the years," Brudereck said with a slight laugh. "We're familiar with K9 units at this point."

The foundation requires certain things of recipients; for example, departments must follow up with the organization and document precisely how the grant money was used.

"When we give away a grant, we always want to follow up to make sure it was used for ... purposes for which it was intended," Brudereck said.

Copestick said that because of the monetary issues, many area police departments don’t have K9 units, but rather request aid from those that do when the need arises.

Many area policing agencies have mutual aid agreements when it comes to the K9s. Just recently, for example, Plymouth loaned one of its dogs to Upper Perkiomen Township when there was a bomb threat the local high school.

Part of the reason K9 units are so expensive, Copestick said, is because of the costs involved in feeding, housing and training the dogs, and for ongoing medical care.

In addition to the aforementioned work to the existing kennel, Copestick said he also hopes to get an updated cleaning system there to help make the space more sanitary.

Some K9 dogs live with their handlers, but in Plymouth’s case, all three of the department’s dogs live in the kennel at the police station, making an updated space all the more necessary. Reasons vary on why some dogs may live at home with their human partners, Copestick said, and can include a handler already having another dog at home, such as a retired K9 dog, and co-existing
can be difficult for the dogs, who are typically male.