Bone-afide partners: Ormond Beach Police K-9 Rex retires

Ormond Beach Observer
News

The Ormond Beach Police Department celebrated the retirement of one of its four-legged officers on Friday, Feb. 24.

K-9 Rex, a black Labrador, has been working with OBPD alongside his handler, Officer Keaton LaBrie, since September 2016.

Over six years, garnering numerous narcotics arrests along with some white scruff around his nose, Rex’s career has come to an end. Now he’ll just get to enjoy life, LaBrie said.

“It’s been a great run with him,” LaBrie said. “I know he’s happy to be retired. We wouldn’t be the team we were if it wasn’t for every other member of this agency and department.”

Police officers shared their favorite memories of Rex during the ceremony and highlighted the importance of his training in narcotics detection. He’d helped find a mobile meth lab and a vehicle with homemade pipe bombs, along other accomplishments, and had worked alongside agencies including the Volusia Sheriff’s Office, Holly Hill Police Department, Port Orange Police Department and Daytona Beach Police Department.

Lt. Tom Larsen said that Rex had also helped the U.S. Army Criminal Investigation Division and FBI joint task forces, and that during one of those cases, his narcotics alert on a vehicle led to arrests for fentanyl possession and child abuse.

“Good boy,” Capt. D.W. Smith said, eliciting laughs from attendees at the ceremony.

K-9 Rex has been one of the greatest narcotics detection dogs Larsen said he’s ever seen.

“The belief and trust that Keaton had in Rex was absolute,” Larsen said. “... And therefore, my belief in Rex was absolute, and every time we worked and he did a positive sniff or a positive alert, it usually ended up resulting in something to corroborate either finding the drugs or some kind of drug paraphernalia.”

And sometimes, Rex’s work ethic carried over at home. LaBrie’s mother, Kim, said that one day after her husband had back surgery, Rex wouldn’t leave him alone: Her husband had been carrying his pain medicine in his pocket.

Rex has kept a lot of drugs out of the city, Smith said. Narcotics are a problem nationwide, he said, and the department doesn’t take them lightly. K-9 Rex may be retiring, but the department’s other two K-9s are working hard, Smith said.

“They’ve already proven beyond doubt that they’re going to keep this poison out of our city,” Smith said.