And they would have gotten away with it, too, if it weren’t for those meddling dogs

If the greatest asset of an investigator is the capacity to sniff out key evidence, then Georgia the black Labrador may be Australia’s greatest detective.

Georgia, the first tech detection canine for the Australian Federal Police, after a well-earned swim.Credit: Australian Federal Police

We all know that police dogs have been trained to follow trails, sniff out drugs and even find explosives, but Georgia is the star of her class for the Australian Federal Police as a technical detection expert.

The feds are increasingly turning to traditional canines to do what humans can’t – find tiny plastic devices, such as SIM cards and USB sticks, that can be hidden in the strangest places.

In a world filled with plastics, finding that one piece of evidence requires genetic skill, an enthusiastic work ethic and a truckload of training.

It is not finding a needle in a haystack but finding the needle in a stack of needles – or perhaps finding an illegal drug hidden in a pharmacy.

From January 2021 to November 2022, the AFP tech dogs conducted 160 searches and found 691 hidden items including a USB stick hidden in a bowl of garlic cloves, a hard drive stashed in an Esky of food, a buried electronic ankle bracelet, phones hidden in shoes and a SIM card in a wall cavity.

Dux of the class Georgia, with her handler Leading Senior Constable Scott Lewis, went on 14 searches over four months, finding 83 devices including mobile phones, USBs, SIM cards, SD cards, hard drives and smartwatches. She could open her own PAWn shop.

In December 2020 Georgia succeeded where police had failed. Brisbane terror suspect Raghe Abdi had cut off his electronic ankle monitoring device, allegedly murdered two people – Maurice Antill, 87, and Zoe Antill, 86 – and was later shot dead by police.

Ready to roll. Paul Ioannou and Doris,Credit: Darrian Traynor

Georgia and Lewis were called in to search for the bracelet. They were assigned 1.6 hectares of heavily treed land dotted with running tracks where the tamper GPS on the bracelet had been activated.

When local police and Georgia found nothing, Lewis decided to broaden the search area and allowed the dog to roam. As the sun began to set Georgia stopped at a giant tree trunk, circled and began to dig. She had found the bracelet that was later downloaded as part of the double homicide investigation.

Such was her success that the program was rapidly expanded to 13 dogs around Australia. The initial funding came from assets of crime, which means the crooks paid for the dogs that would catch them.

When the program was expanded, funds came from $31.6 million provided to the AFP for child protection investigations. Sadly, that makes up a depressingly large part of their work, as the offenders try to conceal evidence on external memory platforms.

But they are also used in cases such as cybercrime, counterterrorism and transnational serious and organised crime. Like the rest of us, crooks are reliant on technology, which always leaves a footprint.

Senior Constable Paul Ioannou is a cop with an engaging smile, a salt and pepper beard and a love of his job. He has worked in many areas of policing, but you feel he will be with the dogs for the rest of his career.

Handler Senior Constable Paul Ioannou with Doris.Credit: Darrian Traynor

He has Bondi – a drug, firearms and cash specialist – and Doris, a specialist tech-detector. Among the 100 federal dogs there are also specialist explosive hunters. It stands to reason they are the most laid-back, as you don’t want an excited dog jumping on a bomb.

For just over 12 months he and his Victorian-based blonde Labrador Doris have been on the hunt for hidden data devices often missed by human searches.

These are the top-end dogs and are used on federal jobs and increasingly to support state police operations.

Ioannou explains that dogs process smells differently to us: “Think of a pizza with the lot. We smell the pizza and a dog identifies every topping.”

An example was Doris finding a USB hidden in a plastic sleeve buried among a mass of stamp collection albums. Ioannou says child porn offenders are often hobby collectors, which can make searches more difficult.

Team leader Sergeant Craig Kersten says dogs on the trail sniff between five and 10 times a second, inhaling through one nostril and exhaling through the other. Their smell processing capacity is 40 times stronger, and they can find a scent as faint as one part per million.

“Dogs smell on a molecular level, processing individual scents,” he says.

Puppy training, from eight to 14 weeks, is the critical development period, he says, to tap into instinctive urges. “It allows them to fulfil their biological potential to hunt.”

The tech dogs have to reach another level, as the scent of electronic memory devices is tiny. If there is time and the handlers are briefed before a raid, the dog can have a quick refresher on the exact scent of the devices that need to be found.

The dogs begin full-time training aged around 12 months and retire to their handlers’ homes or a foster family at six to eight years. In training, they are sent to recently vacated public housing to replicate the hundreds of scents that would be picked up in a real search.

The role of dogs in policing is expanding. There are dogs that can bring down suspects, fly in helicopters, find evidence, lead raids, support victims giving evidence, lift morale in offices or care for officers suffering from PTSD.

“We are pushing the limit [of what dogs can do] and haven’t found it yet,” Kersten says.

Dogs and handlers are matched through personality traits, with Kersten saying the best advice is for the humans to get out of the way and let the dogs do their thing.

He says human searches miss items because of preconceptions. We see a coffee machine, smell coffee and believe it is what it seems. A trained dog sees a potential hiding space. “Dogs don’t lie,” says Kersten.

(Although they can cheat. A dog’s handler can’t be used to plant an object to be found in training, as the dog short-cuts the process by following the familiar human scent to the hiding spot. They can also read their handler’s body language, which can hint at an outcome.)

For the dog, success doesn’t result in a kill but a reward. “Some dogs love hugs, others a ball or a game of tug of war,” says Ioannou.

The dogs are housed at the AFP kennel in outer Melbourne, clearly a Club-Med for pups. There is a creche for 12 puppies that includes chew toys and play units. Down the back is a pool, an exercise track and an obstacle course. They will be sent to foster families before returning to the program. About half will make it through the selection and training process.

If a dog slips out, they can usually be found near their favourite activity, hanging around the pool or the exercise track. They are not encouraged to play together, as they wear each other out, and they need all their energy for work. The mature dogs have individual runs, sleeping quarters and meals professionally planned and measured to the gram.

When the dogs see handlers walk by, they bark and run - a “pick me, pick me” routine, as each wants to be selected for the next job. Clearly they also love their work.

Doris and Ioannou, who have trained together for a year, arrive at a building that can be configured as different styles of house for training drills.

As soon as the dog is dressed in an AFP harness she knows it is time to go to work. Both handler and dog are full of energy and enthusiasm.

Doris is sniffing walls and furniture, tail wagging furiously, then she sits at a spot, satisfied she has done her job. A quick search finds a mobile phone hidden in a shoe. Ioannou praises Doris and they join in boisterous play with a ball on a rope as a reward, then it is back to work.

Former Subway spokesman Jared Fogle, second from left. Bear the dog found the evidence that led to his conviction.Credit: Reuters

She finds a USB in a heater and a micro SD card in a cupboard. They are then told they are on call for a raid search expected to be carried out in the next 24 hours.

The AFP started the tech-dog program in 2019 after seeing its successes in the United States.

Seven years ago, Connecticut police started experimenting with the use of dogs to find electronic storage devices and eventually the FBI became involved.

According to the Australian Police Journal, one of the early dogs, Bear, was used to search Subway frontman Jared Fogle’s home, finding a flash drive filled with child pornography images. Fogle was later sentenced to 15 years’ jail.

There can be no greater example of how traditional sniffer dogs assist in the high-tech world than Operation Ironside, the police sting that saw them intercept 27 million organised crime messages from an encrypted app.

The dogs were sent to 12 Ironside targets in Australia and recovered 80 mobile phones, USBs, SIM cards and SD cards.

As Kersten says: “You can’t trick them.”