Devon & Cornwall and Dorset Police lead the way with the UK’s & Europe’s first Digital Storage Detection Police Dogs.nRob and Tweed are ...
Devon & Cornwall and Dorset Police lead the way with the UK’s & Europe’s first Digital Storage Detection Police Dogs.nRob and Tweed are ready to fight terrorism, paedophiles and fraudstersnDevon & Cornwall and Dorset Police are once again leading the way in investing in cutting edge ways to tackle crime.nnHot off 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.nnDevon & 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.nnChief 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.nn“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.nn“The dogs have been used to sniff out data devices such as mobile devices, USB sticks, SD cards, hard drives and computers.nn“Once again, we have shown that we are prepared to look at new technology and will always strive to get one step ahead to tackle criminality.”nnIn 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.nnFollowing his collaboration with Connecticut State police and FBI, a pilot scheme was started in December 2016.nnPC 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.nn“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.”nnPC Attwood, added: “Our digital dogs have already proven to be a success and have been used in over 50 warrants executed across the UK, includingHampshire, Essex, South Wales, and North Yorkshire”.nn“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.nn“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.”nnRob 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.nnhttps://www.devon-cornwall.police.uk/News/NewsArticle.aspx?id=2bc22361-3d2a-419c-a4dd-01c26869d694 Less
