On Tuesday, March 28, 2023, Ms. Grantham, a sergeant at our local police department with 33 years of experience, came and spoke to our class about digital evidence. Every crime has digital evidence due to society and everyone having devices on them at all times. Estie, her detection dog is trained to find electronic devices (i.e cell phones, cds, hard drives). She was trained in an Indianapolis prison, and is a career change dog, meaning she was meant to be a service dog but failed her final exam. She is now a electronic device dog. She is used when the police have completed their search warrants on suspected holders of child pornography, then goes into the home to find electronics that could be hidden in places such as underwater or in gun-safes. All devices that hold storage contain a circuit board, a chemical in the making of the circuit board, is poured on top of it in order to keep it from overheating, the chemical is the smell Estie picks up on in order to find these devices when they are out of site. Ms. Grantham compared it to pizza, when humans smell pizza, they smell the food. When dogs smell pizza however, they smell every scent individually and can point them out such as the wheat, cheese, and meat.
She also touched on online threats, which are relevant in today's society, especially with our age group. She shared a personal story about her step-daughter. At 15, she meet a guy twice her age on the internet whom she told important details of her life, he ended up lying about what he looked like and who he was. Her step-daughter is now an advocate for the dangers of online chatting and tells her story to help prevent teenagers from making the same mistake she did!
Listening to Ms. Grantham speak about not only her job, but Estie's job as well was extremely interesting and inspiring to see how detection dogs such as Estie play such an important role in the criminal justice system and forensics!
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