ISLE OF WIGHT COUNTY, Va. - K9s are incredibly important to law enforcement agencies. Their strong sense of smell allows them to find evidence that officers might otherwise miss.
While many departments have K9s on staff, that are trained to track scent and find drugs, the Isle of Wight County Sheriff's Office is now the first in the region to get an Electronic Storage Device Detection K9 (ESD-K9).
Pixel, whose name is quite fitting, is the first K9 in the area that's trained to sniff out USB drives, hard drives, SIM cards, and cell phones.
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"There's a substance sprayed on the memory chip that keeps it from overheating. It's the industry standard and that's the odor that she's trained on," said Investigator Sean Lacy.
Memory chips are inside of small storage devices and can be easily hidden by predators and difficult to locate by human investigators alone.
K9-Pixel and her handler, Investigator Sean lacy, can locate these devices whether they are tossed on roadsides, thrown into the water, or even placed in a vehicle as a tracking-device by a stalker.
"We actually worked a case recently with another jurisdiction where they found AirTags hidden in a car, so we were called out to verify that there were no more tracking devices on the car," said Investigator Lacy.
Pixel can also clear buildings.
News 3's Erin Miller was there as Pixel searched the Board of Supervisors' board room, which appeared to be empty, and found a USB tucked between two chairs, and a hard drive at the bottom of a tissue box.
While these were exercises, Investigator Lacy said the Sheriff's Office has active investigations every day. In fact, she's been deployed several times locally.
"She's worked some human trafficking cases, she's worked some stalking cases, she's worked some narcotics cases — where she's located some devices that investigators may have missed," said Lacy. "She also does a good job of making sure that we did our job, where it's just a verification that we didn't miss any devices."
She's also a vital resource when it comes to prosecuting predators. Investigator Lacy said, often, predators who exploit children try to hide electronic devices. Pixel finds the evidence and gives law enforcement enough power to indict accused criminals.
Any evidence Pixel finds, let's say a cell phone that has been tossed into the wood line, can help close cases and bring closure to families.
"We're going to be more successful and more efficient at finding devices that we otherwise may not have found," said Investigator Lacy.
However, her skills reach far beyond the brush. Pixel is also a trained therapy dog, helping victims in high stress moments and even the employees within the Sheriff's Office.
"We're confronted with crisis every single day all day, and to have something that you can just forget about the road, leave all that stuff behind, come pet the dog and see her excitement to see you. How can you not love that?" said Investigator Lacy.
Pixel also comes at no cost to the Isle of Wight County Sheriff's Office or the people in the county.
She was donated through the Non-Profit organization, Operation Underground Railroad (O.U.R.), which was formed to protect children from sex trafficking and sexual exploitation.
O.U.R’s domestic mission is to provide ESD Detection K9s to law enforcement agencies at no cost through donations. O.U.R. collaborates with Jordan Detective K9 to train Labrador retrievers as ESD detection K9s.
Pixel is also not the only four-legged member of the department. Below you will see the three other members of the K9 Unit:
Explosives Detection K9-Nova
Tracking and Trailing K9-Mack
Narcotics Detection K9-Max
The Isle of Wight County Sheriff's Office closes a lot of child exploitation and drug cases, which protects citizens even in neighboring jurisdictions, and these K9s are a big part of that.
