Rosco is an Electronic Storage Detection (ESD) K9 that works to save children from trafficking rings.IMAGE: John Haning
Rosco, a two-year-old labrador retriever and K9 officer with the Rogers County (Oklahoma) Sheriff's Office, is not your average dog.
After graduating from Jordan Detection K9 Training in May 2022 as an Electronic Storage Detection (ESD) K9, Rosco was placed in the Rogers County Sheriff's Office. Today, handler Lt. John Haning and Rosco work together in the fight against predators seeking to exploit children sexually.
The team takes this role very seriously, and they are good at it.
In fact, because of the team’s efforts, a doctor who treats children in Ecuador, currently faces a 30-year prison sentence for creating explicit content involving minors.
Haning says they were called in to participate in this high-stakes operation involving international law enforcement agencies. Their job was to locate evidence the search team might have missed.
The team explored the area, searching for concealed storage devices, and Rosco's keen sense of smell guided them to their target. Rosco sniffed out two digital-storage devices containing evidence that would put this predator behind bars for a long time.
Rosco's contributions in this raid extended beyond uncovering hidden electronics. When an overwhelmed 15-year-old girl with special needs was found in the residence, Rosco's secondary training as a support dog kicked in. He approached the girl, and his presence quickly calmed her down.
This case made international headlines, but Lt. Haning says it isn’t the one that got him hooked on this heart-wrenching and challenging work. It was actually the case involving Brayden Kent Bull, who was charged with possession of child pornography in 2021 and faces over 50 years in prison.
“He’s the first guy in the U.S. that has ever been charged and tried in state, federal and tribal jurisdictions on the same charge,” he says.
Rosco found the device that led to these charges. “Missing that one device would have been a game changer. If we hadn’t found it, Bull would have only faced seven to 10 years in a federal prison versus 50 and we would have never found his victims. This case made me reflect on the cases where we may have missed evidence before we had Rosco.”
ESD Dogs
Rosco is counted among a rare “breed” of dogs trained in Electronics Storage Detection (ESD). In fact, Haning says there are only 103 such K9s in the U.S. and abroad.
ESD dogs may be rare, as compared to drug detection or bomb-sniffing dogs, but the perpetrators they are going after are plentiful, according to Haning. Data from the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children (NCMEC) supports this. NCMEC data reveals there were 88 million Child Sexual Abuse Material (CSAM) files reported in 2022.
Haning shares tips coming to law enforcement from this organization have tripled in the last four years.
“It’s vastly increased our workload just in Rogers County, population 100,000,” he says. “It’s unreal. In my opinion, those who view and possess child pornography have probably victimized children, or they will. They just haven’t been caught yet.”
With numbers like these, dogs like Rosco are becoming increasingly more important. OurRescue.org, an international organization leading the fight against child sexual exploitation and human trafficking, assists with placing ESD dogs in U.S. law enforcement agencies. To date, the organization has placed 95 ESD K9s in 35states and eight in international departments.
Circuit board components are coated with a compound called triphenylphosphine oxide (TPPO) that dogs can detect.Sniffing Out ESDs
The journey to train a dog to detect electronics devices started in 2012 when Connecticut State Police Trooper First Class Mike Real was challenged by his supervisor to teach a dog to locate computer hard drives.
During the meeting, the computer crimes unit sergeant disclosed that hidden devices were often missed during search warrants because of their small size and unexpected hiding places.
Armed with that information, the team tapped Dr. Jack Hubball, a chemist from the forensic laboratory in the Division of Scientific Services, to look into it.
Dr. Hubball examined various electronic storage devices, such as hard drives, thumb drives, and SD drives, and discovered every device had a circuit board and all circuit board components were coated with a compound called triphenylphosphine oxide (TPPO) to prevent them from overheating.
He then discovered TPPO has a unique odor that dogs can be trained to detect. “If something has an odor, you can train dogs to find it,” Haning explains.
Once trained, ESD dogs can locate hidden mobile phones, USB drives, laptops, hard drives, and SD cards. “This chemical is only found on devices that store data,” Haning says. “It’s not used in your television remote or something like that.”
ESD dogs can be trained to locate TPPO-coated devices, whether they are tossed into the dirt, thrown into water, placed in a vehicle, hidden in ceilings and floorboards, concealed in electrical outlets, and more.
Training ESD Dogs
Labrador Retrievers are the most common type of dog used for this purpose, though Golden Retrievers are used too, according to Haning. Their keen sense of smell, strong hunt drive, and love for food make them perfect for this purpose.
The dog’s training begins around a year old and goes on for about four to five months. Once paired with a handler, the team undergoes another two weeks of intense training.
The training focuses on teaching dogs to identify the scent of TPPO and sit when they detect it. When the dog has a successful find, he gets food as opposed to the ball or toy a K9 trained in a different type of detection might get, according to Haning.
Initially, dogs are trained to detect large amounts of the material hidden in different places. As time goes on, the quantity used diminishes and is distributed in more locations, including underwater, until the dog becomes adept at detecting minuscule amounts.
“It doesn’t take a lot to get these dogs on a target,” Haning says. “They find the device, they get rewarded and praised a lot. It’s already bred into them to want to please people.”
Ongoing training is necessary to keep the dog’s skills sharp, but that training is easy to incorporate into every day, according to Haning.
He explains ESD dogs only eat when trained, which happens up to three times a day. This means when the team is not conducting a search warrant, the handler must hide TPPO-coated technology in random places and have the dog search for it, before he is fed.
“I hide devices twice a day, sometimes more,” he says. “I vary up the times and the amount of food he receives. I hide the devices, and he goes through the process of finding them, and then he gets fed.”
Search Warrant Uses
ESD dogs search a scene after human investigators have done their work, which can be a hard pill for some investigators to swallow, Haning admits.
He shares that the first time he requested to bring in Rosco to help find devices, investigators pointed out they were capable of finding those things on their own.
“I promised them, ‘If it’s there, he will find it,’” he says. “We went in and sure enough, we found two devices, after eight federal agents had searched the house. Ever since then, they call us in for every search warrant.”
ESD dogs never do the initial search, he adds. They are always called in to do a secondary search for devices. Haning says, “And I can tell you that almost every single time we’ve looked, we have found devices that were overlooked because of how well they were concealed.”
Dual Purpose Dogs
ESD K9s are dual-purpose dogs. Though the bulk of their training centers on finding electronics devices, they are also trained as comfort dogs, Haning explains.
The dogs are used to comfort victims, who are often small children, during search warrants and in victim interviews, he says. They are also used in school and community presentations to build awareness about child trafficking, sexual abuse, and the work the dogs do.
“Rosco can tell when someone is hurting,” he says. “We had one search warrant with a sweet, eight-year-old child present. As we went through the devices, we realized this child was one of the main victims. Rosco interacted with her and kept her calm and distracted while we were doing what we needed to do.”
In Ecuador, a young girl was in a back bedroom being consoled by her grandmother. “Rosco started doing little tricks, and this little girl completely forgot why we were there,” he says.
The same thing happens back at the department, he says, where officers themselves may struggle after the search warrant.
“Rosco can sense when we are struggling and he’ll do things to give us a break in the day,” he says. “He’s definitely our little angel. He helps us cope, so we can see the good side of what we’re doing, which is to make a difference in the life of a child. I hate going through what’s on these devices, but it’s worth it when you know your dog found a key piece of evidence that saved a child. If we hadn’t found the device, that child would continue being victimized.”
Rosco is an Electronic Storage Detection (ESD) K9 that works to save children from trafficking rings.IMAGE: John Haning
Circuit board components are coated with a compound called triphenylphosphine oxide (TPPO) that dogs can detect.
Circuit board components are coated with a compound called triphenylphosphine oxide (TPPO) that dogs can detect.
