The Etowah County issued the following announcement on March 31.
The Etowah County Sheriff's Office accepted a grant from the Governor's Office to start a self-sustained Digital Forensics Center.
"There's digital footprints if you will, in a lot of what everybody does every day," explained Sheriff Jonathan Horton.
The agency is using the nearly $15,000 grant to purchase high-speed computers, a hard drive duplicator, and a program to analyze data on cellphones and computers called Cellebrite.
"There are so many things that can quickly be answered. Suspects can be identified and ruled out--by your cell phone GPS location, by pictures taken, by a text sent, by phone calls received, by emails received," said Horton.
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In the past, the sheriff's office relied on other agencies, like the Tennessee Valley Regional Computer Forensics Laboratory in Huntsville, to collect that data. Sheriff Horton said it's vital to have their own.
"It gives us the ability to have it here local and to carry it out into the field, on scenes," said Horton. "'It's a huge savings as far as the time and fuel, things that it takes for us to travel to different agencies to use the same equipment."
Sheriff Horton added having in-house equipment also benefits the prosecution of the case. "It gives us the ability to secure that digital evidence."
The tech can be used in any type of case.
Lately, the sheriff's office has launched investigations through tips from the Internet Crimes Against Children program, also known as ICAC, including child pornography cases.
''The number of ICAC cases in Etowah County is astronomical. I would say every month we are doing three to four searches on average on residents in Etowah County," said Adam Chapman, an investigator with the Etowah County Sheriff's Office. Chapman has worked with digital forensics tools and is certified to operate the new equipment for the sheriff's office.
Recently, the office has made arrests in 11 cases using digital forensics.
"It's instrumental by putting the person that's committing these crimes behind the device itself," said Chapman.
Sheriff Horton told ABC 33/40, they would like to share the equipment with smaller agencies in the surrounding area.
There are yearly operational costs associated with the new equipment. Horton said those funds will come from the Sheriff's Office budget.
There's no date for when the equipment will be up and running, but the new tools have been purchased.
Original source can be found here.
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