Police dogs can also track smartphones and SIM cards
When you think of police dogs, you quickly think of ‘Kill and attack’, men in those big suits and criminals who are worked on the ground by a dog in a forest. However, these animals can now do much more than just track down people. Your tech can easily find them by nose.
Kill and attack
In case you’ve always wondered about the logic of kill and attack, the ‘kill’ part refers to what you need to do to achieve your goal ‘the attack’. Killing doesn’t have to be taken literally here, it just stands for switching off. Now a dog will not quickly switch off a smartphone (that would be very clever), but instead of a human it can detect a smartphone or even something as small as a SIM card.
For example, the Wiltshire police in the United Kingdom have dogs in their police force that are fully trained to find USB sticks, hard drives and SIM cards. These Springer Spaniels are therefore also called digi-dogs, writes the BBC. They are handy officers to have, because nowadays digital evidence is just as important as physical evidence. Just think of Mocro Mafia: the Videoland series also showed how the police can discover a whole network of criminals thanks to smartphones and how seizing or hacking a server can have major consequences.
Find Tech Gadgets
However, it is not just about crime related to hacking. For example, the Wiltshire police mainly use the dogs in research that actually revolves around drugs. The drugs must be found, but it must also be demonstrated which contacts there are and what this was about. The dogs can find the tech gadgets through chemicals used in their production.
The British police are not the first to have such a special dog on the team. In Utah, sniffer dogs also search hard drives and cell phones. The difference with the dogs is not only their breed (Utah mainly uses Labradors), but also the purpose. In Utah, for example, dog police are often deployed in the fight against child pornography. There are even dogs that are called “porn dog” because of this.
Dutch police dog
In the Netherlands we also have police dogs that are able to detect tech gadgets, but here too these animals are used very differently. Police dog Amy was the first: she was the first Dutch police dog that could detect mobile phones. She did that for the bureau in Roermond and mainly worked in the prison to check whether prisoners had smuggled in a mobile phone.
It would be useful if the prison in Zaanstad hired such a dog: that prison was in the news six months ago because people were smuggling plenty of iPhones there. Recently, a DJI drone was used to get drugs and a telephone into the judicial complex.
Dog in service
Training a dog to become a police dog is not for every dog and it takes a long time to train to be able to detect ‘specialisms’ such as such a smartphone. As a result, these types of dogs seem to be extra expensive, which makes them initially a difficult decision for the police as an investment. Nevertheless, it is good to see that these types of dogs are also in service in the Netherlands, although more police forces can use these ingenious four-legged friends.