21-02-2025
Tulare County District Attorney's Office hires first electronic detection dog
The Tulare County District Attorney's Office has added a new member to its ranks, Tor, a 2-year-old black Labrador retriever.
On Feb. 18, Tor was introduced to the Tulare County Board of Supervisors, which after a few questions and a brief photo session, unanimously approved the DA's office request to accept him as a donation from the U.S. Secret Service.
'The inclusion of Tor and his skillset continues our focus on the prosecution of digital evidence, white-collar crime, and crimes against children' District Attorney Tim Ward stated in a press release. 'We are honored to have him in our ranks and look forward to his role in the justice process.'
The dog, valued at $20,000, was an inaugural graduate of the National Computer Forensics Institute, trained at a cost of about $30,000. He will serve as the office's Bureau of Investigations' first electronic detection canine.
'He can detect an odor of a chemical component called TPPO, triphenylphosphine oxide, which is used in the manufacturing of electronics to prevent overheating,' Chief Investigator Lindy Gligorijevic said. 'This is in all of our electronics, our smartphones, hard drives, thumb drives, cameras, SD cards. It's in everything.
'He's going to be a fantastic tool, because people hide their electronics,' she said. 'When we're going to do a search warrant, they hide them. What Tor will do on a search warrant is come in and be able to detect if there are electronics hidden somewhere where we can't see them with the naked eye.'
Tor will be available to all law enforcement in the county to help on their search warrants, according to Gligorijevic.
'Also, if he's available, we could probably help out other counties that may not have this kind of dog available to them,' she said. 'Right now, we're just focusing on Tulare County.'
Tor has been described as 'a dual-purpose canine.'
'He's been trained in comfort duties as well, meaning that if we are interviewing somebody where we feel the dog would be beneficial in the room to help relieve a victim's anxiety, he could be used for that purpose,' Gligorijevic said. 'For instance, we just recently had a case where we had to interview multiple victims of a sexual assault, and it was very difficult for them to speak with us.'
Tor is expected to be especially helpful when interviewing children, she added.
'(But) that's not his primary duty,' she said. 'His primary duty is the sniffing part.'
The DA's dog Fortune, who passed away last November, was strictly a comfort dog. The office's Victim Services Division is currently working to find a successor to Fortune.
'He was trained to sit with children when they were testifying,' Gligorijevic said. 'He would sit in the courtroom in the well of the witness box, so the child would have that dog there to give them comfort.
'This dog does not do that,' she said about Tor. 'He's not trained to be in a courtroom for those purposes.'
Tor, whose name is an acronym for 'The Onion Router,' a web browser that is often used to access the dark web, could serve the office into the early 2030s.
'The average working life of a service dog is around eight years, and most service dogs retire at 10 years of age,' Gligorijevic said. 'It's a tough life for service dogs, because they're working dogs.'
The U.S. Secret Service gave Tor to the DA's office as the result of a competitive process, according to Gligorijevic.
'This is a program that the Secret Service developed, and they were looking to place dogs with handlers who had extensive experience in digital forensic work, which my investigator Anthony Benitez does,' she said. 'He's had extensive training in forensic computer investigations and so he qualified for this dog.'
Benitez spent weeks working with Tor in the first-ever Electronic Detection Dog training at the National Computer Forensics Institute in Hoover, Alabama.
'Participating in the (Electronic Detection Dog) training isn't just about enhancing our office's capabilities,' Benitez said in the release. 'It's about ensuring the safety and well-being of our community. The knowledge and skills gained working with Tor will be invaluable in our mission to protect and serve.'
This article originally appeared on Visalia Times-Delta: Tulare County DA hires first electronic detection dog
