February 20, 2020 3.49 pm This story is over 48 months old

First police dog trained to sniff out cybercrime in Lincolnshire

Criminals will get a woof deal from the police’s four-legged recruits

PD Flurry, a ten-month-old Springer Spaniel, will be the first dog in Lincolnshire trained to sniff out cybercrime.

After an intensive 10 week-long training course, Flurry will be able to find hidden phones, computers hard drives, sat navs, memory and sim cards.

The fluffy sidekick will be able to help police catch paedophiles, terrorists and fraudsters who have stashed away their crimes on digital storage devices.

Police dog Flurry is ten months old.

Much like with drugs, the dogs can be trained to sniff out the devices which all have a distinct smell undetectable by the human nose.

So-called digital media detection dogs were first introduced by the FBI in the USA and three other forces in the UK already have some trained up.

Superintendent Paul Timmins said: “Having the ability to search for digital media devices is a massive bonus for us in Lincolnshire.

“Digital detection dogs are fantastic and keep us at the cutting edge of preventing and detecting crime.”