Despite the price tag, local law enforcement believes K9 units are essential for keeping Athens safe.
Early Saturday morning of Homecoming, long before more than 25,000 people packed into Peden Stadium, Ohio University Police Department Officer Adam Hoffman was making his way around the stadium with his police dog, a Belgian Malinois named Brody.
It is a task Hoffman and Brody do this before every Ohio football game, along with Officer Tim Woodyard and his dog Alex.
So many people concentrated in one area make football games—and many other events—possible targets for a bomb. That is the reason the dogs came to Athens in the first place.
“They’re both explosives detection dogs,” Hoffman said later. “We do protective sweeps before any major event like a football game, or if there’s a politician in town, we get there before the crowd to make sure that there are no explosives.”
Athens’ other K9 unit is on standby in the middle of town. Deputy John Kulchar of the Athens County Sheriff’s Office and his dog Ijo, who can complete multitude of tasks: he patrols the streets, he tracks and he can sniff out explosives like the dogs at the OUPD.
But Ijo’s primary task is dealing with narcotics.
“Being the only dual-purpose dog in Athens County, I’m at the beck and call of the Sheriff’s Office, Athens PD, OUPD, state patrol,” Kulchar said. “I have a lot of agencies that at any time can call on me.”
Both K9 units are relatively new to the area, and establishing each unit came with a price tag. But both the sheriff’s office and the OUPD consider a K9 unit essential to fulfilling their respective duties.
Alex came to Athens in the summer of 2014, and Brody followed later that year in October. Hoffman said OU pushed to have detection dogs in the area of the state.
According to OU Police Chief Andrew Powers, the startup cost for a K9 unit is $25,000 per dog, a figure that covers training, equipment and vehicle upgrades. The two dogs cost somewhere between $50,000 and $60,000, which was paid for entirely by grants from Homeland Security.
The annual cost to maintain the two dogs is $12,000, half of which is paid for by the OUPD, which was a condition of the grant covering the startup cost.
“Both of our dogs were funded by a state grant,” Hoffman said. “The state wanted to have explosive detection dogs spread throughout the state. Most of the dogs were concentrated in the cities, and if a dog was needed in a rural area it took too long.”
Alex and Brody respond to bomb threats and perform protective sweeps for events throughout the southern part of the state.
The dogs have responded to several bomb threats over the past year, including one at Athens Middle School. So far, there have not been any actual bombs found where threatened.
The amount of ground covered by the unit varies from month to month.
“It’s kind of hit or miss, how much we travel,” Hoffman said. “We might not leave at all one month, and then be all over the place the next. Election years are when we have the most movement because we have to ensure safety before political events.”
For Kulchar and Ijo at the sheriff’s office, their travels rarely leave Athens County, but the miles do add up. Narcotics work often brings Kulchar to places like Glouster, where drug abuse has been rampant.
That work often leads to collaboration with the Major Crimes Unit, which Athens County has partnered with since 2014 at Athens County Sheriff Rodney Smith’s imperative. Kulchar said he works with the MCU in advance of operations to plan the best way to utilize the K9 unit in the arrest of drug traffickers.
Kulchar’s efforts to work with other law enforcement organizations has won him praise from Smith, who is pushing for more collaboration to tackle the area’s drug epidemic.
“He’s done a great job, he’s really made our K9 unit more effective in catching drug users,” Smith said.
Kulchar became a part of the K9 program in July of 2013, but said that he has worked with dogs since he was 18.
Like the OUPD dogs, Ijo lives with Kulchar.
According to the sheriff’s office, Ijo costs the department $7 per day, although food is donated by the Petland store.
Kulchar said the job can be demanding, but considers it a fair tradeoff to be able to work with the dogs.
“I’m like a kid in a candy store,” Kulchar said. “Working with dogs every day … trying to find and train for new ways to combat drugs is a rewarding challenge.”
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