And it paid off. Queue’s been very successful, and the 11th K-9 is in the process of being placed in a police department because of the bar she’s set. “It just blows my mind some of the stuff that they can actually pick up on, and actually find,” Sgt. Rainey says. “To me, it’s just fascinating.” Finding Hidden Evidence What Queue and Sgt. Rainey do together might seem complicated, but it’s simpler than you might think. A team comes into the space and removes all visible electronics to look for evidence: any computers or cameras that they see, and do a full sweep of the location. But not everything is visible to the naked eye, even the most observant. Micro SD cards, for example, can be so small that they are the size of a fingernail. Hidden cameras can be as tiny as a pinpoint in the wall. The K-9s act as a secondary search team to find evidence. And Queue finds it all — with her nose.
electronics were taken out, and she kept going over to the bookshelf. Officers looked through it, fanned through the books and looked through the bookshelf, but couldn’t find anything. Still, Queue kept going back to the bookshelf. Sgt. Rainey told the officers there was something there, but the officers insisted that they’d thoroughly checked everything. “This went back and forth a couple of times,” Clark says. Way up at the top of the shelf, behind the books, was a black pen. “You could click it, open it, write with it. It ended up being a hidden camera.”
“There have been several cases that she’s found stuff that wouldn’t have been discovered without her being there,” Sgt. Rainey says. “Without her finding what she found in [many] cases, it would have been
Photo by Toni Clark
“A lot of times law enforcement will go out, they know a person is guilty, but they can’t find proof,” Clark says. That’s where dogs like Queue come in. When they’re brought in to an area to look for hidden electronic devices and cameras, they’re essentially doing scent work. Sgt. Rainey says they’re trained to find the scent of tiny traces of a common chemical
super difficult to move forward. But with the evidence and information that was discovered, it helped solidify the case. It’s rewarding to see that she’s done this.” This is just one instance of Queue being able to sniff out evidence that changed the course of an investigation. “People have to realize these things are hidden in items. If I said, go look for devices, if you looked at this pen, you’re going to click it and go, ‘oh, it’s a pen,’” Clark says. She emphasizes that these items are meant to be hidden, and often wouldn’t be found with the naked eye. “You would not think twice about it, but that dog can smell it.” The dogs are trained to find these specific scents, just as they would be trained in scent training. This training is done primarily by a master trainer that works with Defenders for Children and the K-9s. “It’s all scent driven, but it’s that insurance policy. You’re getting that extra validation of, okay, there’s nothing here,” Sgt. Rainey says. “We’re not leaving something behind. It’s really cool to see her work, even though I’m her handler. It’s almost new every time.” “She’s food-driven. We go out, we hunt, we seek, we find it. You give [the dog] praise, let them know they did a great job, and then they get their reward so that they know that they’ve found something,” Sgt. Rainey says. “They know they’ve done it, but at the same token, it’s almost like hide-and-seek.” Their master trainer uses scent work to teach dogs how to find specific scents, and then trains them to look for the specific scent in electronics for the ICAC unit.
Photo by William Donohue
that is within in Read/Write media devices, which refers to storage devices whose data can be read by computers, and also record data. This includes everything from computer towers to hard drives, tablets, cell phones, all the way down to micro SD cards, which could be hidden anywhere. Clark says that in one instance a micro SD card was hidden in a jar of coins – inside a fake coin. “They have these new coins where they’re cut in half. They’ll put micro SD cards inside of them, so you can’t see it with the average eye,” says Clark. “It’s a tiny drop, just a tiny new drop that could be on a micro SD card. You really have to know it’s in there, and the dogs can smell it.” Helping Solve Abuse Cases, One Scent at a Time One of Queue’s biggest finds was also one of the smallest. During one search, Queue was brought in after all of the visible
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