The “Porn sniffing” dog craze has hit conservative Utah as a police agency just announced their purchase of a dog who can purportedly sniff out SD cards on their local TV news.
Drug sniffing dogs have a terrible track record for accuracy according to the Chicago Sun Times, and say federal courts are barely more accurate than a coin flip. State police in Nevada admitted as much too as legal challenges mount to the practice of letting a dog decide if cops are violating someone’s 4th Amendment rights.
SD cards are literally everywhere in modern society, so having a dog indicate their presence seems hardly requisite by the typical police officer.
But law enforcement agencies look for the next big thing or shiny toy all the time, and after last year’s news that former Subway pitchman Jared Fogle had been convicted with the help of a supposed “porn sniffing” dog, popularity and demand seems to be increasing from police for K9 partners.
The big marketing pitch is landing home in far flung law enforcement communities, with big budgets and with the waning usefulness of dogs in law enforcement, many K9 specialist officers whose skills would otherwise be unused, without a dog to handle.
But that isn’t stopping Utah’s Webber County Sheriff’s office from putting up big bucks for a dog who will sniff out the memory chips that make every cellphone in America run, sit inside every camera or camcorder. Their Facebook post says:
Say hello to “URL!” Utah’s first Electronic Detection K-9, or what some may jokingly refer to as Utah’s first “porn dog.” URL is a 16-month old, Black Lab, recently acquired from Jordan Detection K-9 in Greenfield, Indiana. He is only one of nine certified ED K-9s in the country, and the only one in the western states region. URL comes from the same trainer as Bear, the ED K-9 who played a key role in the arrest of Subway pitchman, Jared Fogle.
Look out Utah, the police morality division is sniffing for your electronics now.
