Vestup Campaign

[Sgt. Donovan Livaccari]

A group of benefactors in California who were here helping after Katrina have begun a campaign to raise funds for the purchase of body armor for officers of the New Orleans Police Department and surrounding agencies.

The website for the campaign is www.vestup.org.

All funds taken in by the Vestup Campaign will be administered by the F.O.P. The immediate goal is to provide body armor to all New Orleans Police Department personnel who do not have a vest or have an expired vest. Secondly, the Vestup Campaign has set a goal of purchasing 11 K-9 vests for N.O.P.D. K-9's. If sufficient funds are raised to outfit everyone in the N.O.P.D. who is in need and our K-9's, the funds will then be used to outfit surrounding agencies who may be in need.

As I mentioned, all funds will be administered by the F.O.P. and no administrative fees will be deducted from the funds raised.

Please spread the word about the Vestup Campaign. We need as much publicity on this as possible. As it stands, there are several hundred N.O.P.D. officers who either do not have a vest or who have an expired vest. The goals that have been set are rather lofty (probably at least $300,000), but if we can get a national response, it is feasible.

We certainly appreciate the efforts of Sewell Cadillac, the Fairgrounds, and the other private donors who have made contributions already. However, the need still exists and the more publicity or posts that are made about the Vestup Campaign, the closer we will be to reaching our goals.

I have already received information that the Hong Kong Constable's Office has begun taking contributions to donate the the Vestup Campaign.

Thanks for any help that you may be able to provide. If anyone knows someone with a website that would be willing to put a button on their site for the Vestup Campaign, the HTML code is available on www.vestup.org.

Sgt. Donovan Livaccari, J.D.
Fraternal Order of Police
Crescent City Lodge #2
Employee Represenative
donovan@fop.net
504-905-8280
www.vestup.org

[Billy]

Thanks Donovan for the info, I know the Dept is getting most of the vest but I never thought of the K-9's

http://www.vestup.org/images/vestup_button.gif (http://www.vestup.org)

[Sgt. Donovan Livaccari]

The Department has purchased 424 vests through the Academy from donations. Sewell bought vests for the Eighth District, the Fairgrounds bought a few for the Third and a private benefactor purchased a few for the First. Other than that, I have been told that the funds that were being usd for the purchase of vests has been expended. Therefore, the remaining officers will have to wait until additional funds are available.

Our goal is to replace not only lost vests, but expired vests. We also plan on going outside of the NOPD once everyone is taken care of. This is an ambitious project and we have received some promising responses. Aside from the Hong Kong Constable's Office, we now have the Gainesville Police Department on board and we are receiving new contacts on a regular basis. In fact, I recently received an email from the Vancouver Police Department.

Ms. Gallagher, who is organizing the effort from California will be on WIST AM690 tomorrow (Friday, 12/8) at 2:15 p.m. to talk about the effort.

I am sure that PANO agrees that this is an important task to undertake. We just need to make sure that the campaign gets as much publicity as possible.

Thanks,
Donovan

[rmilessr]

I will be placing vestup buttons on two of the websites that I author today.

http:///www.kennerjustice.com and http://www.kcpaaa.com

Robert