They’ve busted suspects for marijuana possession, stolen cash and purse-snatching.
They’re members of the Holland Police Department but wear no uniforms.
They’re the department’s two canines, Henry and Harrand.
“We view the canines as being such an important asset to patrol activities,” said Sgt. Drew Torres, canine unit supervisor for the Holland police. “To not have them would mean suspects getting away from police, a missing person possibly not getting found and narcotics going undetected.”
But city budget restrictions mean the department has had to seek alternative means of fundraising to equip and train the canines and their handlers.
So for the second year in a row, the department will host a golf outing to raise money for a new dog. This year’s outing will be 9 a.m. June 22 at Macatawa Legends Golf Course.
The department raised $15,000 for the canine unit last year, money that helped fund the addition of Henry to the force. Henry was purchased after Grego retired after seven years of service.
The department’s other dog, Harrand, likely will need to be replaced within the next year, Torres said.
A new dog can cost the department between $10,000 and $13,000, with additional costs for training the handler.
The dogs assist officers in a variety of searches, including narcotics, weapons and missing persons. They also provide protection for officers.
Patrol Capt. Jack Dykstra said the protection is invaluable.
“If we have to go into a dangerous situation and a canine can go in versus an officer going in first, it clearly assists us in keeping officers safe,” Dykstra said.
In 2008, the canine unit assisted Holland police in narcotics searches in which $74,575 worth of drugs were seized.
In February, Grego tracked a purse-snatcher who was hiding from police in a basement crawlspace.
In March, Harrand helped West Michigan Enforcement Team officers confiscate 20 pounds of marijuana from a vehicle.
Those are just a few examples, Torres said, of how the dogs aid police in investigations.
“A dog’s sense of smell is anywhere from 100 to 400 times more sensitive than a human’s,” he said. “It can make the difference between finding something and not finding something.”
As many foundations reduce giving to charities, McAuley Ministries is helping nurse them to life.
"In the current economic climate, foundations are seeing their asset bases shrinking and the size of their annual grants tends to shrink with that," said Scott B. Leff, associate executive director of the Bayer Center for Nonprofit Management. "As a result, there's special value to our nonprofit sector having a new foundation appear to fill in some of that gap."
Born last year from the sale of Mercy Hospital to the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center, McAuley Ministries is targeting the neighborhoods of Oakland, West Oakland and the Hill District with money for health and wellness, education and community development.
"We see it as continuing to serve the neighborhoods served by Mercy Hospital, but now in new way, in a way that addresses new problems with resources made available from the sale of the hospital," said Sister Patricia McCann, vice chairwoman of the McAuley Ministries' board of directors.
"In a way, it's a blessing that the funds have become available right at this time, because now is when the needs are great," she said.
The foundation is named for Catherine McAuley, caretaker of Catherine and William Callahan, a wealthy Quaker couple in Dublin. When he died in 1822, he left his estate, now worth about $1 million, to McAuley.
She later founded the Sisters of Mercy, the religious order that established Carlow University, and dedicated her life to serving the sick, the poor and the imprisoned. She is considered by the Roman Catholic Church as venerable, the first step toward sainthood.
The foundation is run by the Sisters of Mercy and located on Carlow's Oakland campus.
McAuley officials say the development of a new arena in the Hill District and improvements Uptown, such as the new recreation center built by Duquesne University, signal rebirth.
"We've come into existence at a time of tremendous change and opportunity in those neighborhoods," said Michele Cooper, executive director of McAuley Ministries.
Because the foundation is targeting three neighborhoods, it has a chance to magnify its impact, Leff said.
"From those communities' perspective, it should have a multiplier effect so that the resulting impact makes it equivalent to a much larger foundation that might be spreading its giving over a broader region," he said.
Since first giving away money in December, the biggest grant has been $500,000 to the YMCA of Greater Pittsburgh. That money will create a "vegetative roof" to help teach children about environmental friendly buildings.
"They see that community as their own community," said Eric Mann, president and CEO of the local YMCA. "Therefore, they want to see it continue to survive and keep kids and families healthier."
Another potential beneficiary of McAuley Ministries is Bethlehem Haven of Pittsburgh. That nonprofit group provides housing to homeless women and their children.
The group's case managers had been doing two jobs — finding housing while meeting the women's other needs. That led to homeless women spending up to two months in shelters and two years in temporary housing.
A housing specialist should reduce that time to six or nine months, said Lois Mufuka Martin, executive director of Bethlehem Haven.
"We need a faster way to take people out of our shelter and transitional housing into permanent stable housing," she said.
Pink-slip parties and avid online networking have grown popular as the recession continues. But taking some time each week to volunteer and apply skills learned on the job to help nonprofits could only help in the long run, according to job-search experts.
"It's so essential to get out from behind your computer at home and get engaged in organizations where people meet and get together," said John Challenger, chief executive of Challenger, Gray & Christmas, a Chicago outplacement firm. "Doing volunteer work is a great way to get engaged with an organization. You'll get to know the people who work there, the board, the people who run the organization, which is valuable in your job search. You feel like your skills aren't atrophying. In fact, you could put it on your resume."
BVU is in the early stages of organizing a program called the Council of Professionals and Executives, or COPE. Organizers hope that COPE will tap scores of laid-off workers - attorneys, marketing pros, human resources and financial experts - for their specialized skills, and link them to nonprofit groups as short-term project consultants and advisers. Levesque hopes to be one of them.
Pink-slip parties and avid online networking have grown popular as the recession continues. But taking some time each week to volunteer and apply skills learned on the job to help nonprofits could only help in the long run, according to job-search experts.
"It's so essential to get out from behind your computer at home and get engaged in organizations where people meet and get together," said John Challenger, chief executive of Challenger, Gray & Christmas, a Chicago outplacement firm. "Doing volunteer work is a great way to get engaged with an organization. You'll get to know the people who work there, the board, the people who run the organization, which is valuable in your job search. You feel like your skills aren't atrophying. In fact, you could put it on your resume."
BVU is in the early stages of organizing a program called the Council of Professionals and Executives, or COPE. Organizers hope that COPE will tap scores of laid-off workers - attorneys, marketing pros, human resources and financial experts - for their specialized skills, and link them to nonprofit groups as short-term project consultants and advisers. Levesque hopes to be one of them.
NORTH HAMPTON — The Carella Company, one of New Hampshire's leading full-service marketing agencies, has launched a new Web site for Friends of ASAPROSAR, a nonprofit organization of medical professionals and lay volunteers that provides free eye care to rural, impoverished communities of El Salvador.
The project included refining the Friends' message, the consolidation and division of all content for improved readability and search-engine indexing, as well as development and imagery consistent with their mission. The Carella team also enabled online donations through PayPal.
"Since our inception more than 20 years ago, we have been so busy with our work, finding the time to refine our Web site and make it a more useful resource for our supporters and those within our organization seemed impossible," said Scott Zeller, whose family has been going on trips to El Salvador with Friends of ASAPROSAR for many years. "We now have a site that we are not only extremely proud of, but one that reflects what Friends of ASAPROSAR is really about."
Friends of ASAPROSAR performs surgeries and eye exams, as well as providing eyeglasses from an inventory of more than 10,000 pairs the group has gathered. The group also donates money for the education of children, trains health promoters for rural villages, and has special programs for women's health.
Friends of ASAPROSAR also has micro-credit programs for women-owned businesses, and donates toys and clothing to those in need.
"The work Friends of ASAPROSAR does is truly admirable," said Mike Carella, vice president of The Carella Company. "This group gives so much to people in need, so to support their future success really was an honor for us."
A New York mother was arrested in Arkansas City Wednesday after local police learned she left her home state with two young daughters of which she did not have custody, police chief Sean Wallace said.
Amanda Perot and her two children – ages six and two – were taken into custody at a residence in the 1500 block of N. Fourth. Perot was taken to the Cowley County Jail after police learned she was wanted in Yates County, New York on a count of endangerment of a child.
She will remain in jail until New York officials can pick her up.
Wallace said his department received information about the children from the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children and quickly learned they were considered endangered.
The children had been reported missing by their grandmother. Perot was reported to have been visiting two Ark City men, one of which she had met on the Internet and was a registered sex offender, Wallace said.
The children were taken to the Wichita Children's Home and will stay there until their grandmother – who is their legal guardian – can travel to Kansas to pick them up.
The pulse of electronic music could be felt blocks away from Hart Plaza on Saturday, the familiar sign of the arrival of techno festival weekend. After nearly a decade, it has become a Memorial Day weekend staple in downtown Detroit.
The crowds began to grow around 4 p.m. -- just as the action on the event's four stages began to heat up.
"I wouldn't miss this for anything. It's the best time to be in Detroit," says Andrea Pullen of Southfield. Her husband, DJ Stacey Pullen, has performed at past festivals. "I like getting turned on to the new music. It's gotten better over time, the sound systems, the stages. It doesn't lose the excitement."
Jason Huvaere, president of Paxahau, the event's producer, said ticket sales were going better than expected for the festival, which continues through Monday. Movement drew more than 75,000 over three days in 2008. At nearby hotels, the lobbies were flush with out-of-town partygoers preparing for a weekend of music and afterparties.
Organizers try to make Movement greener
Heaps of paper flyers strewn across Hart Plaza had always been a telltale sign that techno festival weekend had arrived. They also meant that Aaron Siegler had done his job.er
At the first electronic music festival in 2000, Siegler realized he could get into clubs and events for free if he helped pass out promotional leaflets. Over the years, the 29-year-old Farmington resident made a business out of distributing the circulars, which are a mainstay in the electronic music scene and particularly present during Movement, when promoters are trying to draw the crowds at Hart Plaza to the many related after-parties.
Siegler has worked at every Detroit techno festival, and in peak years, he and his street team handed out 40,000 flyers.
But those kinds of numbers are no longer aligned with the growing desire for greener forms of communication, or fans' increasing reliance on social networking sites like Twitter or Facebook for information.
Though Siegler traveled to California last week and Miami in March to distribute flyers for this year's Movement, his numbers are down, hovering around 10,000. And his time spent promoting on the Internet is up. Movement's producer, Paxahau, offered a free ticket to festival fans for reposting 90 electronic promotional ads.
The new archbishop of Westminster faced continuing criticism from victims of child abuse today
as he was formally installed as the leader of the 4.2 million Catholics in England and Wales.
Child safety campaigners were outraged when the Most Rev Vincent Nichols said it took "courage" for religious orders and clergy to "face the facts from their past" in response to a report examining the systematic abuse of thousands of children by Ireland's religious orders and state-run institutions. The comment was made in an interview broadcast on Wednesday.
Judge Sean Ryan, who chaired the nine-year inquiry, only praised one order, the Rosminians, for attempting to understand the abuse as well as document it.
The Christian Brothers, who ran the largest number of institutions, agreed to drop legal challenges and give evidence only once a deal was agreed not to name guilty clerics. A spokesman for the Irish Survivors of Child Abuse, John Kelly, said: "The religious orders ran to the safety and sanctuary of the Ryan inquiry knowing their guilty evidence was granted privilege and immunity."
The archbishop sought to clarify his remarks before his investiture. On BBC 5 Live he said the "main use of the word courage" referred to victims and that anyone who overcame an addiction had to overcome "self deceit". He said: "It is a tough road to take, to face up to our own weaknesses. That is certainly true of anyone who has deceived themselves that all they have been doing is taking a bit of comfort from children."