The City of Elsmere Police Department welcomed Nova and Officer Jesse Wenning at Tuesday night’s meeting as a new K9 unit sponsored by Kenton County’s Commonwealth Attorney Rob Sanders.
At the meeting, Sanders presented the new duo to the Elsmere City Council, stating the continuation of bringing in and training new K9 units beyond the detection of medical marijuana. The unit will be serving the city of Elsmere but will also be an available resource for the Kenton County region.
“Nova is the most recent canine that my office used asset forfeiture funds, or money that we seized and forfeited from convicted drug dealers, to purchase a canine for one of our local police departments,” Sanders said.
In 2023, Kentucky legalized medical marijuana under Senate Bill 47, which officially took effect in January 2025.
Nova is the newest addition to the new training initiative to leave out marijuana detection from dog training so as to not arrest or cite medical marijuana users. She is the sixth K9 unit the Kenton County Commonwealth Attorney’s Office has funded for the Kenton County region.
According to National Geographic, while dogs can be retrained to no longer alert for marijuana, there are potential risks and legal factors that can arise. If marijuana is mixed in with another drug, such as cocaine or heroin, the dog may not give an alert. Even if the dog is retrained, the scent would continue to linger in the air, potentially leading to no-cause searches.
“She’s off to a great start,” Wenning said. “Very fast learner and faster than Onyx started picking things up so a couple of months until we’re rocking and rolling.”
Wenning recently retired his previous K9 companion, Onyx, to his family home and has been training with Nova for over three months. The duo is now a certified tracking team, apprehension team and narcotics detection team.
“I know that she’ll be beneficial, not only to our city, but to other cities where she is needed,” said Council Member Gloria Grubbs.