A suspect has been arrested after a dog trained to detect electronic circuitry found a memory stick containing images of child sexual abuse hidden in a tin box inside a metal cabinet.<\/p>\n
Rhode Island police received Thoreau from Connecticut police after the dog completed 22 weeks of training, which involved detecting gadgets for food.<\/p>\n
The only other US gadget-sniffing dog remains stationed in Connecticut.<\/p>\n
But some UK experts have questioned the efficacy of the training methods.<\/p>\n
Thoreau’s handler, Det Adam Houston, told the\u00a0Providence Journal: “If it has a memory card, he’ll sniff it out.”<\/p>\n
The food-based reward system was how the dog ate “every day”, he added.<\/p>\n
But Maggie Gwynne, of\u00a0Sniffer Dogs UK & International, told the BBC this was “completely contrary” to the UK police and prison service’s training methods.<\/p>\n
“Offering a sniffer dog food in exchange for a ‘find’ opens the way for an abuse of the system – if its hungry enough it will take food from anybody, not just its handler and therefore defeats the object of the search,” she said.<\/p>\n
“It would be interesting to research their success rate, however.<\/p>\n
“I don’t believe this is a field that any UK police dog would be trained in, and I personally have never heard of such a thing,” .<\/p>\n
“[Sniffer dogs] are concerned with the detection of drugs, cash, firearms, explosives, and are used for conflict management and tracking criminals who have legged it, or missing and vulnerable people.”<\/p>\n
It is unclear whether the dog can distinguish between a memory stick and other electrical equipment likely to be around a suspect’s house, such as TV remotes, radios and computers.<\/p>\n
Ms Gwynne said she had no doubt dogs could be trained to locate hard drives and\/or memory sticks, in the same way firearms dogs were trained to find metallic objects but the idea “that it could make a distinction as to what it has found, seems unrealistic”.<\/p>\n
In 2008, dogs Lucky and Flo, were trained to sniff out pirated DVDs, withWired\u00a0noting: “The dogs cannot decipher the difference between pirated and authentic DVDs.”<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Source: BBC<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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