Celebrating one year of Northamptonshire's digital detection Police Dog Rosie

A police dog in Northamptonshire, who specialises in digital evidence detection, is celebrating one year on the job.

PD Rosie, or Northamptonshire Police’s “digi-dog”, alongside her handler, PC Sam Clark, is trained to search for devices containing memory and storage including USB sticks, SD Cards, digital cameras, Go Pro and head mounted cameras, hard drives, sim cards, laptops, tablets, mobile phones, car keys fobs, sat navs and more.

During her first year, she has also managed to get upskilled in cryptocurrency.

The results she has achieved since being licensed in November last year have been extensive.

The results include:

• Locating a victim’s mobile phone following a robbery.
• Finding a mobile phone which had been concealed under a bed as part of an investigation into child sex offences. A search was conducted by officers prior to PD Rosie arriving, however nothing was found. PD Rosie located this vital evidence which assisted in the remand of the suspect and a lengthy prison sentence of more than 14 years.
• Discovering a mobile phone concealed in a sofa following a warrant. The device was later confirmed to be the County Line phone.
• Being used numerous times for high-risk domestic violence offences where there is hidden suspected devices, for example tracker devices fitted to vehicles or hidden listening/recording devices.
• Locating a mobile phone that had been stolen in a robbery and discarded by the suspect. Despite a general purpose dog not finding the phone, PD Rosie found it 14 hours later concealed in difficult terrain.

PD Rosie’s handler - PC Sam Clark said: “It’s a joy to work with PD Rosie – she is intelligent, switched-on and a great crew mate, so I am really pleased with how successful she has been in her first year at Northamptonshire Police.

“Since we started in November, Rosie has been requested a number of times, resulting in a number of successes, many of which align with the force’s matters of priority. I’m really proud of her and can only see her workload increasing over the next year as the world we live in gets even more digital.”