Jupin: We got called out to a scene where the concern was that there might be some hidden cameras throughout the house. Brought Selma in and we searched the house — each floor of the house and each room in the house and when we got into one of the bathrooms, Selma alerted to a vent. Inside that vent, we discovered there was a miniature camera.
Narrator: The dogs only get fed if theyve smelled TPPO first. That way, they continue to stay motivated to find it.
Halligan: All that is, is a simple food reward system. We have the dogs smell the odor, theyre rewarded with food. Smell the odor, rewarded with food repetitively.
Narrator: So how exactly do these dogs manage to smell something that, to us, doesnt have much of a scent? Humans have about 6 million olfactory receptors in our noses. Dogs have up to 300 million. So, they obviously have a much better sense of smell. To get these dogs to sniff out electronics specifically, the K9 team sent a bunch of devices to their lab which was able to isolate one specific scent.
Police dogs at the Connecticut State Police Department are trained to sniff out electronics. They can find anything with digital storage, such as cell phones, thumb drives, computers, and memory cards. The program started in 2012 to help investigators find digital evidence to crimes.
The discovery led to a man being found guilty of sexual abuse and the distribution of child pornography, resulting in a 15-year prison sentence and a $175,000 fine.
Rather than training dogs to focus on weapons and drugs, law enforcement has moved from a count of three electronic sniffer dogs across the United States two years ago to “three dozen” now working in the country.
Sota, a black Labrador belonging to Minnesota law enforcement, is the result of such training. According to local publication the Star Tribune, Sota is able to sniff out small electronics — including smartphones, USB drives, and microSD cards — that may contain key evidence in sexual abuse and child predation cases, as well as white-collar crimes.
Two-year-old K-9 Sota made her debut this week with a public introduction organized by the states Department of Public Safety (DPS).
Police dogs are now being trained to hunt out electronic devices that could provide key evidence in criminal cases.
Once more, Calandra commanded, “Show me.” Iris picked up the pad of sticky notes with her mouth, and flipped it over. A microSD card fell out.
Dogs like Iris have helped the FBI “tremendously,” said Laura Robinson, special agent and coordinator for the FBI Evidence Response Team at the Newark Field Office. “Thumb drives can be disguised as pens, toys, thumb tacks, almost anything,” she said. “They’re going to find things we wouldn’t have any hope of finding. The more sophisticated our target, the more helpful they can be.”
Officers begin training the dogs to identify large amounts of the compound, eventually using less and less. They place devices with the odor in different boxes, and expand the training into different rooms. The Connecticut program spends five weeks imprinting the dogs with the odor and teaching them how to do their job, and then six weeks training them to work with their handlers, Real said.
Investigators from the FBI, the Indianapolis police, the Indiana State Police, and the US Postal Inspection Service searched the former Subway spokesman’s house for two hours, carrying away computers and electronics, looking for evidence of Fogle’s alleged child pornography distribution.
The call came at 5:30 am on a hot July morning in 2015. The Indianapolis Metropolitan Police Department told canine trainer Todd Jordan and his detection dog Bear to meet them at a house in Zionsville, Indiana. It was “kind of a big deal,” Jordan was told, but he had no idea why. Ten minutes after arriving at the large, beige brick home, he had his answer.