The Powell Police Department plans to soon add another K-9 to its ranks.

On Monday, the Powell City Council approved a $17,000 budget amendment that will allow the department to acquire a second drug detection dog.

Bringing an additional K-9 on board will allow Powell police to have one of the animals available at all times, Powell Police Chief Roy Eckerdt said in an interview.

“Having that K-9 available helps to ebb the flow of narcotics through Powell,” Eckerdt said, “and every step we can take to keep illicit substances out of Powell, we’re willing to do.”

Funding for the new dog will come from cash that was seized from two suspected drug dealers in Cody nearly a decade ago, thanks in part to the work of a former Powell K-9. The department currently employs Syd, a Lab mix who’s been handled by Officer Reece McLain since 2020.

Beyond being used to check packages, residences or vehicles for illegal drugs, the department has also worked with the Powell schools and Northwest College to conduct random checks of students’ bags.

“It’s not only an effective tool, it’s also an effective deterrent,” Eckerdt said of having a detection dog.

Because the department is the area’s only law enforcement agency with a K-9, its handlers and detection dogs are occasionally called upon to help other agencies. The demand ebbs and flows, Eckerdt said, but they’ve assisted the Wyoming Highway Patrol, Cody Police Department and the Wyoming Division of Criminal Investigation.

In February 2014, Cody police asked McLain and his then-K-9, Zeke, to sniff around a private plane parked at Yellowstone Regional Airport. The pilot and his passenger had aroused suspicion by not identifying their Cessna TU206E by its tail number, not radioing the airport prior to landing, paying in $100 bills, using a fake name and generally appearing as though they might be hiding something — including by being very protective of one of their bags. Zeke ultimately alerted to the scent of a controlled substance around the plane’s doors, which helped Cody police obtain a search warrant for the men’s hotel room. Inside, they found $258,520 worth of cash packed into 12 vacuum-sealed bags, 15 cellphones, three fake Idaho driver’s licenses for the pilot and some additional money.

The men were eventually convicted of federal crimes relating to their failure to register their airplane with the Federal Aviation Administration.

“While the exact details remain a mystery, it is no mystery that Gilbert Wayne Wiles, Jr., and his co-defendant Scott Lewis [the pilot] were up to no good,” a panel of judges on the Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals wrote in 2018.

The plane and most of the cash were eventually forfeited to the federal government, which asserted in a separate civil proceeding that the assets were involved in distributing drugs. Powell police received a share of the funds for their assistance, and $17,000 remains.

Purchasing a K-9 from a private vendor and training its handler is expected to cost around $12,000, Eckerdt said, while outfitting one of the department’s patrol vehicles for the dog will cost around $5,000. It will be the first time in several years that Powell Police has had two K-9s.

Eckerdt noted that the expenses can be significant and if the forfeiture funds weren’t available, “it might be a different ask.”

McLain’s current detection dog, Syd, was purchased with the help of a $5,000 donation from the Bryan Gross Memorial Fund; the fund honors the memory of Converse County Sheriff’s Deputy Bryan Gross, who died while trying to rescue a teenager from the North Platte River in 2011.

Eckerdt hopes to have the new K-9 on board by early spring.