Grayson County Sheriff's Office confiscates weapons, drugs

By Basil Gist

Staff Writer

       Tioga Police Department K9 Unit Joga helped turn a routine traffic stop for the Grayson County Sherriff’s Department into a drug and guns bust.

       After officers found a THC pen inside the vehicle of Matthew Atwater, police said, Joga hit on more and did not disappoint.

       “A quantity of pills, believed to be OxyContin, another THC vape pen and two firearms were located in the vehicle,” the department said in a report.

       Following the application of a warrant after an open air search around the suspect’s RV, officers found substantially more, they reported.

       Police Chief Curtis Macomb said the officers found “18 firearms (four shotguns, seven rifles, seven pistols), three suppressors, 37 grams of THC, 64 grams of mushrooms, 32.6 grams (combination of codeine, hydrocodone, Ambien, Tramadol) of [penalty group] 3 drugs, 2 grams heroin, 13.9 grams of OxyContin/Oxycodone and 1.5 pounds of marijuana.”

       “It was a good hit,” Macomb said. “Our dog did well, and we were proud of her. It wasn’t our arrest; we were an assisting agency with our dog.”

       Macomb later explained how much help K9s like Joga can be in those otherwise routine stops.

       “Let’s just say you pull someone over and there are signs of narcotics in the vehicle—that’s reasonable suspicion,” Macomb said. “… But you get a dog in there to do an open-air sniff and it alerts on the trunk, and there it is. Sometimes the dogs are busy, busy, busy, and sometimes they are bored to tears.”

       The report says Atwater was booked into the Grayson County Jail on a charge of driving while intoxicated—the initial reason he was pulled over—as well as on a charge of possession of the above narcotics and guns.

      “Once that dog alerts and confirms they’ve got narcotics there, that gives you probable cause to detain people, search the vehicle and sometimes it’s just half a joint, but you don’t know that until you get in there and start looking,” Macomb said. “The dog adds a sense to us that we just don’t possess as humans.”