Human Scent Used To Find Illegal Pot Field

The Liberty County Sheriff’s Office bloodhound team assisted the LCSO Narcotic Unit in finding an illegal pot field in Georgia using human scent.

The Scent Evidence K9 trained bloodhound team of Capt. Lonnie Bowman and K-9 Charlie typically use human scent to find missing persons or suspects evading capture. This time they used a suspect’s unique scent to locate his illegal grow field. The bloodhound team is 3 for 3 in trailing success since joining the LCSO K-9 Unit.

On Sunday, August 25, 2019, Liberty County Sheriff’s Office Deputies in Georgia received information about a possible illegal marijuana grow in the rural area of the county. After conducting surveillance and conducting a traffic stop, a quantity of fresh green marijuana was seized. The investigation turned up information that the arrested subject had been seen exiting a wooded area around 7:00 am on the 25th prior to his arrest. The Liberty Narcotics Unit contacted Captain Lonnie Bowman and requested that he attempt to track the suspect’s trail back to the possible grow site.

Captain Bowman collected odor from the suspect’s pants, who was now in custody. Captain Bowman and K-9 CHARLIE, a scent discriminate Bloodhound recently purchased from Scent Evidence K9, responded to the scene. The trail at this time was nearly 30 hours old and had been rained on. Captain Bowman gave CHARLIE the suspect’s odor and was able to trail the suspect approximately 2 ½ miles to where several marijuana plants were located.

CHARLIE has been deployed on 3 real-world trails and been successful all 3 times. Liberty County Sheriff, Steve Sikes said ‘Charlie has been a benefit to our community”. The Scent Evidence K9 team couldn’t be prouder of Liberty County’s hard work and commitment to creating a safer community for the people they serve.  Read more about the Human Scent Discriminate Training K-9 Charlie and Capt. Bowman received HERE.

Interested in how you can Up Your K-9 trailing game? Contact [email protected] or call 850-272-6950 or visit Scent Evidence K9 in Booth 38 at the 2019 International K-9 Cop Magazine Conference in Nashville Sept. 10-12. Click HERE for conference info.