wiredinUSA October 2012

INDEX

#16 EDITOR

Paws for thought when reading this issue of wiredInUSA. For whilst it is commonly accepted that dogs are a man’s best friend, they are also crime-busting and money-saving! Or at least ‘Jazz’, an English black labrador is. The pooch has been trained to become the first detection dog in the world to trace stolen metal (see p25). Dogs have long been used to sniff out drugs and explosives and now, forced into action as metal and cable theft continues, the UK police has enlisted the help of the four-legged variety. Metal theft costs the UK economy some £770m a year and there are about 1,000 incidents reported every week. So the UK police have trained Jazz to sniff out stolen metal in places it is hard for the humble officer to access – piled high in scrapyards and where any forensic markings are not immediately visible to the human eye. Jazz is already hard at work sniffing out SelectDNA forensic markings on a range of metals including copper, lead and aluminum, and simply touches the metal withhis nose to identify it as stolen. Amazing. David Bell Editor

wiredInUSA - October 2012

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wiredInUSA - October 2012