Nala has a nose for electronics.
But she’s not your run-of-the-mill tech geek with a passion for gear and gadgets.
A specially trained electronic storage detection (ESD) K9, Nala is a 4-year-old English Labrador retriever and a key member of the Seattle Police Department, the lead agency for Washington state’s Internet Crimes Against Children (ICAC) task force, charged with fighting child sexual exploitation.
“They’re amazing animals, and I’m very blessed and lucky to be working with one,” said SPD Det. Daljit Gill, Nala’s handler and an 18-year veteran of the department.
Nala is one of two dogs in the state trained for sniffing out electronic storage devices such as hard drives, smartphones, thumb drives, micro SD cards and more. The Vancouver (Wash.) Police Department employs a dog named Hota.
In Oregon, the Lincoln County Sheriff’s Office has a new ESD K9 named Trinity. That dog traveled north earlier this year to help SPD search the Lynnwood, Wash., home of a former Expedia Group employee accused of hiding cameras in two bathrooms at the travel giant’s headquarters in Seattle. Trinity, who stepped in because Gill and Nala were on vacation, helped find at least 33 additional spy cameras when police executed a search warrant at the man’s apartment.
Marcelo F. Vargas-Fernandez, 42, was arrested Feb. 1 and has been charged by King County prosecutors with four counts of first-degree voyeurism.
“It was pretty cool,” Gill said of Trinity’s help. “He scored a really big case.”
Working to eat
ESD K9s are trained to detect the odor of a chemical compound called triphenylphosphine oxide (TPPO) that is used in the production of electronics.
Dogs like Nala are food motivated, so they only get fed when they find a device, even when just practicing at home. Labs, with their natural high energy and large appetites, are an ideal breed for ESD work. And it’s evident when Gill straps on a pouch filled with Nala’s kibble — the dog is ready to work.
Nala obviously doesn’t know what evidence she’s helping to locate, she just knows that smelling TPPO on a hidden camera or SD card means it’s time to eat.
During a recent demonstration (video above) at a SPD facility on Airport Way South, Nala entered a conference room where Gill had hidden a handful of electronic storage items — underneath chairs and desks, inside a lectern, inside a strip of plastic used to conceal a power cord.
Working the perimeter of the room, Gill commanded Nala to “seek” as she repeatedly tapped the walls and furniture. When Nala keyed on a scent, her energy increased dramatically as she pawed at the suspected area of concealment. Gill said the space behind electrical outlet switch plates is a common spot for suspects to hide smaller items.
“Nala is like a flashlight,” Gill said of the dog’s role during a warrant search. The dog sniffs out areas that human officers will then search more thoroughly. Or, if a space has already been searched by humans, she provides a secondary sweep. About 30% of the time, Nala will find a device that was overlooked by a human.
“I hesitate sometimes to deploy her first because of the fact that she’s food motivated,” Gill said. “And so if we go in and we find all the devices, she’s going to be full. I want to keep her more motivated to work, hitting those outlets and carpet seams and places where people would normally not think to look as detectives.”
A growing problem
Nala is following in the Seattle footsteps of another rather famous K9 named Bear, who joined SPD in 2015. Bear was credited that year with helping to locate a USB thumb drive in the Indiana home of Jared Fogle, the onetime pitchman for Subway restaurants who is serving 15 years in prison after pleading guilty to charges of traveling to have sex with a minor and possessing child sexual pornography.
Bear also helped search the home of Marvin Sharp, a U.S. Olympic gymnastics coach arrested on suspicion of child molestation in 2015. Sharp died in his jail cell in an apparent suicide weeks later.
Bear, who retired in 2021, and Nala, and many of the 130 or so dogs in the U.S. who specialize in ESD, were trained by Todd Jordan, owner of Jordan Detection K9 in Indianapolis.
Commenting on a pedophilia case in June 2022, in which a dog named Hidu was being hailed as a hero, Jordan emphasized the importance of electronics detection dogs, saying they had surpassed accelerant dogs that investigate arson “because of the way the world is right now.”
“Every internet crimes task force could use one of these,” Jordan said.
Gill, who has been with ICAC since 2015, echoed that sentiment in highlighting the number of cases Washington’s task force and other agencies are dealing with, especially since the COVID pandemic, when internet crimes skyrocketed as more children and predators were online.
“We’re getting about 1,500 to 2,000 cyber tips a month for all of Washington state,” Gill said, referencing such crimes as soliciting a minor or uploading/sharing child sexual abuse material. The number of tips averaged about 200 in 2020. Case referrals from the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children have also more than doubled since 2019.
Artificial intelligence has also become a factor in the types of content being created and shared. Washington Gov. Jay Inslee signed a bill into law this month that creates criminal penalties for distributing or viewing digitally altered (or “deepfake”) sexually explicit images or videos featuring identifiable minors.
Therapy for a tough job
SPD’s ICAC task force is a small group, featuring three investigators who handle tips, two forensic examiners, and one intelligence analyst. And Nala.
In the basement offices where the task force works, there are dog beds near some desks and plush toys are scattered about.
Despite the crucial nature of the work, it’s not something a lot of people want to hear about, or see. In one hallway, a sign warns people rounding a corner to beware that they may witness disturbing images on an officer’s computer.
“When I first became a cop, people would ask, ‘Dolly, tell me a story. Did you arrest anybody lately?'” Gill said. “When you go into ICAC, they’ll ask you once and they’ll never ask you again. It’s a certain different type of ick factor that people don’t want to hear about.”
Working with Nala helps with some of that. Labs are people friendly, and Nala is no exception, coming in for scratches — and leaving her fur behind — during GeekWire’s visit.
Gill hands out a “trading card” featuring Nala, with the dog’s stats on the back: Born Oct. 21, 2019; 24 inches tall; 52 pounds; likes to fetch, snuggle with stuffed animals and, of course, find electronic devices.
“You don’t want your dog to be scary, especially when we do investigations that involve children,” Gill said, adding that Nala is good therapy in her own way.
“She’s the best part of my day. She wants to make me happy and I want to see her happy,” Gill said. “I get to come to work with my best friend.”
