LAW ENFORCEMENT : A Hair-Raising Fund-Raiser

Pasadena police will use their half of the $12,000 raised in the annual Fuzz for Funds beard-growing contest--the lowest amount collected in the fund-raiser’s three-year history--to purchase a new police dog.

The rest of the money will be donated to Haven House, a shelter for battered women in Pasadena, said Janet Pope-Hinton, the civilian police administrator running the charity event.

The money raised this year was $6,000 below last year’s total and more than $11,000 less than the money raised in the contest’s first year, Pope-Hinton said. That’s because people already have been donating to department-sponsored youth ice hockey and karate programs, she said.

“Last year we didn’t have all these other programs,” Pope-Hinton said.

When the department’s police dog, Rocky, retired last year, Pasadena became one of a handful of cities in the West San Gabriel Valley without at least one police dog. In a show of support, other area police departments that use police dogs, such as Monrovia and Azusa, showed up Thursday for a special ceremony in front of Pasadena City Hall to mark the end of the contest. The police officers sign up sponsors for their beard-growing efforts to raise the money.