In today’s high-tech environment our law enforcement officers face new challenges with cyber criminals manipulating computers, cell phones, and the internet to threaten our banking, financial and critical information. All types of technologies are used to commit any and every type of crime.

For the DeKalb County Sheriff’s Office to be able to help combat these crimes, we sent Investigator Tony Blackwell to the National Computer Forensics Institute (NCFI) for a training run by the United States Secret Service’s Criminal Investigative Division and the Alabama Office of Prosecution Services. The Basic Computer Evidence Recovery Training is based upon the Secret Service’s successful cyber investigative strategy with the intent to combat the ever evolving threat of cyber-crimes that we face today. This training took 5 week to complete. The curriculum in this training included how to recover data, pictures and deleted files from the device. This information will be used in many different crimes such as sex crimes, homicides, crimes involving young children or adults, and even burglaries.

At the completion of this training the National Computer Forensics Institute issued the DeKalb County Sheriff’s Office with about $35,000 worth of equipment to be able to conduct these investigations.

Chief Deputy Michael Edmondson says “these types of cyber-crimes are in our County and now that we have the equipment and the education we will be able to be more proficient in our investigations. A lot of the cases that will be worked with this equipment will be on the sex crimes and on the sex offenders.”