West Plains, MO. – One Howell County K9 unit will be seeing less activity during a semi-retirement, and another is being trained to replace them.
The subject of this semi-retirement is K9 Otis, and while Otis is a somewhat recent addition to Howell County law enforcement, the changing of Missouri law to legalize marijuana has made Otis’ job more difficult in recent days. Otis is trained to alert to marijuana and as such cannot be used in typical drug investigation cases.
Despite his relatively short tenure on duty with the Howell County Sheriff’s Office, K9 Otis has aided in the seizure of over 1.6 pounds of meth, 239 capsules of Fentanyl, 139 grams of cocaine, and hundreds of items of drug paraphernalia.
However, K9 Otis will not be going into full retirement and will still be used for things such as marijuana eradication in schools.
Another K9 has been set in place to replace Otis, and has been paid for through multiple grants.
For more information on this, Howell County Sheriff Brent Campbell gave a statement.
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