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OGDEN — Law enforcement officers used K-9s and their keen sense of smell to help them find drugs, locate missing people and help solve arson investigations.
Now Utah police have a K-9 to find child pornography.
On Tuesday, the Weber County Sheriff's Office introduced URL — pronounced Earl — as the latest addition to their fight against child pornography.
"He'll definitely find it. He has an incredible nose," URL's handler, detective Cameron Hartman, a member of the Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force, said during a demonstration Tuesday.
URL is the state's first electronic detection K-9. With a few simple commands like "seek" and "show me," URL on Tuesday was able to find small electronic devices — SD cards, SIM cards, USB sticks, thumb drives and other items — hidden throughout a room in the sheriff's office for the demonstration. Some of those devices were completely concealed under other items.
He can also detect large devices such as cellphones, iPads and tablets.
URL is trained to smell common chemicals found in devices that store electronic media, such as pictures and videos. Although he cannot specifically tell which devices contain child pornography, his main use will be to find small electronic devices that child pornographers may try to hide, thus earning URL the nickname the "porn dog."
URL has already been used to assist investigators serving search warrants in two task force cases, and he was able to find hidden devices at another house, Hartman said.
The so-called porn dogs gained national attention when a dog named "Bear" found a key piece of evidence in the Jared Fogle case that had previously been overlooked, helping prosecutors convict the former Subway spokesman.
As of Tuesday, there were fewer than 10 dogs like URL nationwide. URL was trained by the same person who trained Bear, Hartman said.
Although his main duties for now will be in child pornography cases, Hartman said URL can be used to find any type of evidence stored on electronic memory devices and could be used in the future to find contraband, such as smuggled cellphones, in the Weber County Jail.
The playful 17-month-old black Labrador was actually twice given up by families to shelters before ending up with a law enforcement career, he said.
"A few families kind of gave up on him and probably didn't realize the gift that he has, because he has an incredible nose," Hartman said.
URL went through six months of training as a puppy in Indiana before he was brought to Utah. His purchase was made possible with funds through the Weber Metro Narcotics Strike Force.
