Don’t let Niko’s friendly disposition fool you. He’s no ordinary dog. Niko helps catch criminals. And he uses his nose to target tech.
“What we’re finding and what we’re seeing is just awful – it’s horrific,” Deputy Sheriff Matt Fleming, Niko’s handler, said.
Police in New Hampshire are using this K9 in the fight against child pornography.
Niko can sniff out hidden memory cards, thumb drives, cell phones and other small devices that record and store the porn.
“We’re finding them in water, buried in the ground, cars, refrigerators, frozen in ice,” Fleming said.
Deputy Fleming says Niko can recognize the faint scent of chemicals used on circuit boards inside even the smallest of electronics.
When Niko picks up the smell he sits.
In this training session – he found a hard drive in a drawer, a flash drive under a garbage can and a sim card taped under the table.
Niko has been on the force for two years and has helped track down several suspects.
Including a Nashua New Hampshire pastor who was arrested after police say Niko found devices containing child porn on church property.
“It’s definitely been a game changer,” Lt. Eric Kinsman, the head of New Hampshire’s Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force, said.
Sixty dogs in the country can do what Niko does.
And their skills are in high demand as the number of child pornography cases continues to climb.
“In 2021 there were over 84 million files of child sexual abuse material shared across the internet,” Lt. Kinsman said.
“What we really want is to make sure that all of the evidence that’s out there of these horrible videos of children being exploited is taken off the streets,” Deputy Fleming said.
Niko was originally trained as a seeing eye dog, but his handlers felt he showed promise as a police K9.
He’s still relatively new to the job and he’s already helped execute more than 200 search warrants in New Hamsphire.
For more info on Niko–
https://www.nhicac.org/k-9-storage-detection/
New Hampshire ICAC Task Force–
Internet Safety for Parents–
https://www.icactaskforce.org/internetsafety
The FBI is looking for these people associated with Crimes Against Children–
https://www.fbi.gov/wanted/ecap
(Copyright (c) 2022 Sunbeam Television. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.)