To find the spy camera, Snatch makes its snout slide at soil level and carefully sniffed, but at full speed, each potential hiding place: presented on Thursday by the gendarmerie, is one of the first police dogs in France capable of locating electronic equipment, crucial in certain surveys.
Trained at the National Cynophile of Gendarmerie Instruction Center (CNICG), installed in Gramat (LOT) and celebrates its 80th anniversary on Thursday, this 4 -year -old Belgian shepherd was considered operational in the fall of 2024, as well as a second Dog -based dog in Doubs, and both already have about twenty operations.
A necessary capacity
These “electronic dogs”, as the gendarmes also designate, can identify everything that includes an electronic circuit: computers, telephones, USB keys, hard drives, SIM or SD cards, even microSD …
“The digitalization of uses means that digital data support dogs (their official denomination, editor’s note) can be used for any type of business (…) because electronics can be the vector of the commission of infractions or have evidence of the commission of a crime,” explains the head of the Damien Courton squad, head of the CNICG training department.
A few days before the center’s anniversary, Snatch indicates its truffle to each of the 25 closed metal containers with a lid placed on the ground and then travels the brick cells from which the walls of a training room are lined, before suddenly freezing in front of one of these cavities and elongated.
This is where his teacher, the noncommissioned officer David Rodríguez, hid the pen that has a spy camera. For Snatch, that the camera is hidden in such a device does not matter: what it seeks is the smell of the tantalio, a rare metal present in most printed circuits.
Unlike Americans, who make their dogs smell with trifenylphosphine oxide, a chemical compound used during the production of electronic equipment, but only obtains 30% of success, the French gendarmerie has decided to favor tantalus, identified by Dutch researchers as potentially more effective, explains David Rodriguez.
“They obtained results around 70%, and that is what we have also,” he explains.
“Find the smell”
To congratulate Snatch of his finding, the Gendarme launches his “sausage”, a cylindrical fabric toy that the Malinois grab the flight and immediately chew with the application. The concept of prize for the game is in the heart of police dog training, and this new specialty is no exception.
Whether you look for tickets, cannabis, firearms, a missing person or, in this case, a USB key or a phone, these canine officers are really trained to find the smell they associate with the idea of playing with their masters.
In the CNICG dressing room, Snatch successively discovers a tablet, a connected clock and a microSD card, and it is every time to make its toy. “Give!” Rums his teacher David Rodríguez, who nevertheless slips his satisfaction. “It’s good something.”
Faced with the confusing efficiency of the young dog, the experienced gendarme loose: “We are no longer surprised by anything, now, when we see that they can detect cancers or water leaks …”
In fact, Snatch has already managed to detect a lithium battery that did not include a tantalio. “Dogs detect a cocktail of smells that have not necessarily identified,” said Commander Courton, and Snatch will have seen “a second smell to mark.” “It is the magic of dogs,” he concludes.
Source: BFM TV
