Dogs Are Sniffing Out Electronics
by Michael Dean Thompson
Cops have found themselves challenged by the decreasing size of electronic devices and the correlated increase in the ease of hiding them. To assist them, they have begun using dogs to sniff out a key chemical used to create the devices, triphenylphosphine oxide, which remains on the devices as residue. The dogs are called electronic storage device (“ESD”) K9s and are said to be capable of locating hard drives, smartphones, thumb drives, micro-SD cards, and other devices. Seattle Police Department Detective Daljitt Gill says that her ESD K9, Nala, hits on hidden devices that investigators missed before her about 30 percent of the time.
There are roughly 130 ESD K9s in use across the U.S. All of the K9s were trained by Todd Jordan who runs Jordan Detection K9 in Indianapolis. One of the dogs he trained named Hindu was being billed as a hero in a pedophilia case when Jordan proclaimed his dogs had become more important than those used to find accelerants in arson investigations. “Every internet crimes task force could use one of these,” Jordan told Geekwire.
The dogs work for food and are allowed to eat only when they have successfully found devices, including when they are off-duty. Labrador Retrievers like Nala are great breeds for the job because they are energetic with nearly insatiable appetites. Once the initial investigators have completed their search, ESD K9s are brought in to find anything they may have missed. The handlers wait until the end in order to minimize the glut of material, keeping the dog hungry to incentivize their search.
One of Nala’s predecessors, an ESD K9 named Bear, was instrumental in the search of Jared Fogle’s home in Indianapolis. He had once been the face of Subway. The advertisements featuring him had been considered some of the most successful in history. But, cops discovered Jared was financing child pornography and traveling to have sex with minors. Bear was brought in to search his home and found a hidden USB containing child porn. The find helped the conviction that has Fogle serving 15 years in prison.
Gill’s ICAC office contains a dog bed for Nala and signs warning visitors that the computer screens may contain disturbing images. Yet, that also begs the question: When everything we do involves electronics, from the office where Nala rests to the vehicle in which Nala rides, how do the handlers avoid nasal fatigue in their dogs? Anyone who has been around a scent long enough begins to find themselves unable to smell it. Dogs are just as vulnerable to the effect. Likewise, with the dogs coming from a single trainer, it seems unlikely the process of training and working the dogs has born any scientific review with regard to the dogs’ health and actual success rate. It may be that, like horses that are purported to count, the hungry, people pleasing dogs are simply responding to their handler’s cues.
Nevertheless, the work is important. Another Seattle dog, Trinity, is credited with finding 33 video cameras potentially used to make hidden videos of women in work bathrooms. With the ever-increasing presence of devices in every aspect of our lives, the ESD K9s are yet another tool for cops to nose around with.
Source: Geekwire
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