Sniffing out digital devices

Devon & Cornwall and Dorset Police are once again leading the way in investing in cutting edge ways to tackle crime.Hot on the heels of being the first police force in the UK to set up a dedicated drone unit, the Force has now announced that they have trained two Digital Storage Detection Police Dogs.

Devon & Cornwall and Dorset Police have added to their ranks police dogs Tweed and Rob. Tweed a 19-month-old springer spaniel and Rob a 20-month-old black Labrador are the first police dogs in the UK, and the only dogs outside of the USA, to be trained to detect Digital Storage Devices.

Chief Superintendent Jim Nye, Commander for the Alliance Operations Department, said: "This is an historic step for the Alliance and policing in the UK. These dogs will give the police a new way to fight the threat of terrorism, paedophiles and fraudsters.

"Tweed and Rob have been used by police at crime scenes and executions of warrants, not just within Devon, Cornwall and Dorset, but across the whole UK.
"The dogs have been used to sniff out data devices such as mobile devices, USB sticks, SD cards, hard drives and computers.

In May 2015 Police Constable Graham Attwood, who is a police dog instructor for the force began to research the ability to train such a dog. PC Attwood identified that the first dogs in the world to train in Digital Storage Detection were trained at the Pioneering Connecticut State Police Dog unit, in the USA.
Following his collaboration with Connecticut State police and FBI, a pilot scheme was started in December 2016.

PC Attwood said: "Myself and members of the alliance dog school initially handled and trained Tweed and Rob, mainly in our own time, as we were committed to our usual daily duties of training the forces other operational police dogs. "The majority of the dogs we have in the force either come from our puppy breeding scheme or are gift or rescue dogs, but this was a unique challenge for us as so we identified and purchased Tweed and Rob last December when they were around 15 months old, and embarked on this journey with them."
Recently retired Connecticut State Police Dog Instructor and co-founder of the American programme, Mike Real, along with Special Agent Jeffrey Calandra who is the only Digital Detection Dog handler in the FBI, were invited to Devon for a week in March 2016 to train with and assess Tweed and Rob.

This formed part of an independent review of the ability of the dogs to detect digital storage devices, at the Alliance Police dog school, Middlemoor, Exeter.
Under the watchful eyes of the visiting Officers from the United States the dogs were put through their paces, in a three-day assessment process of the dogs' operational search abilities. Tweed and Rob passed with flying colours.
Mike Real said following the assessment: "Constable Attwood and the trainers at the Devon and Cornwall Police Canine Unit have done a masterful job of bringing this new discipline of police canine to the U.K.

"These dogs have already proved their ability and their worth in the U.S. in locating evidence in numerous important cases. I have every confidence that Tweed and Rob will provide the U.K. law enforcement community an impressive new tool in the fight against child predators, fraud and terrorism."
PC Attwood added: "Our digital dogs have already proven to be a success and have been used in over 50 warrants executed across the UK, including Hampshire, Essex, South Wales, and North Yorkshire".

"We have already seen some really fantastic results from these two dogs. Tweed on one warrant indicated that something may have been within what looked like a coke can. This was then inspected by a search officer and discovered that it was actually a money box which had a number of SD cards hidden within it.
"Rob has also indicated a small device hidden carefully in a draw which would have likely to have been missed by the human eye; which just goes to show that they are able to locate these items which assists us greatly with our searches."
Rob and Tweed are part of a trial, and the force will assess the success of these dogs and their new skills at the end of the 2017 with a view to rolling this out wider. The dogs live at home with their new full time police dog handlers, PC Martin King and Pc Jill Curnow.