INDIANAPOLIS — A new member of the Indianapolis Metropolitan Police Department has a very specific set of skills.
Hunter is an electronic detection K9, and he's the department's first cyber-crimes dog.
Hunter helps solve child exploitation investigations by sniffing out things like cell phones, SD cards and other digital devices.
"Every digital device has a unique characteristic that he's able to detect. He's not telling us of images on a thumb drive he's telling us the existence of the device," Detective Darin Odier, Hunter's handler, said.
Detective Odier says there are only around 50 electronic detection K9s nationwide. Their tracking abilities are not limited to homes or offices.
"Inside, outside, sometimes even underwater to a certain depth, so they're pretty remarkable," Odier said. "You know dogs are able to do so much these days. You know we've heard about dogs that are able to find bed bugs and detect cancer cells, and the dogs that are service dogs that help their handlers when they're going to have a seizure and things like that, so this is just another variation of that."
Hunter was previously a service dog. He has been on the job with the IMPD cybercrimes unit for a few weeks.
