Breaking News
Community News

When You Leashed Expect It: Parkersburg’s newest K-9 sniffs out electronic devices

By Evan Bevins 4 min read

PARKERSBURG -- Most of the time, Dan Miller's dog Nyland is a typical yellow lab, friendly, eager to see what's going on around him and welcoming head scratches or belly rubs from anyone offering.

But when Miller places the food pouch on his belt, Nyland "knows it's time to work."

For Nyland, that work is detecting electronic storage devices like cell phones or thumb drives to assist law enforcement officers like Miller, a detective with the Parkersburg Police Department.

"There's a chemical that's sprayed on any kind of storage device that acts as a cooling agent," Miller explained.

Nyland can detect that scent and lead Miller right to a device that officers might have missed. The dog can even detect such devices in shallow water or when buried in a few inches of dirt.

It's happened three times already, including on one search in Huntington, where Nyland was called in to assist as the only electronic storage device detection K-9 in West Virginia.

"Each one of them, he's been able to find storage devices, items we've missed," Miller said.

Nyland was purchased for the department by Operation Underground Railroad, a nonprofit organization that works to combat child trafficking and sexual exploitation around the world. O.U.R. will also continue to fund Nyland's veterinary bills and food.

Miller is the one who initiated contact with the group in an effort to give the department another tool to fight child exploitation.

Miller began his law enforcement career as a K-9 handler with the Ritchie County Sheriff's Office. When he recently began working internet crimes against children cases, which he said showed him "an underbelly to society that a lot of people don't know exists."

Nyland comes from a litter of puppies named in honor of the late Betty White; his moniker is a nod to the surname of her character Rose on the sitcom "Golden Girls." He was originally training to be a service dog for an individual with disabilities, "but he had a little too much drive," Miller said with a laugh.

O.U.R. paid for Miller to be go to Indiana to train with Nyland at Jordan Detection K9 for a couple weeks. Nyland had been trained for a while in advance.

Nyland likes to be active and working, Miller said. He's trained by food rewards, so the only time he eats is when he's working or training.

"I hide stuff multiple times a day, so he can be fed," Miller said. "That means at home, I throw some phones or thumb drives out in the yard."

Other K-9s do article searches, for anything that has been touched by a person, but that means they will indicate on mundane items like a cigarette butt or beer can. Nyland will go right by them, looking only for that specific scent, Miller said.

"He can be utilized in so many ways across the state," he said.

While the primary goal is for the K-9 to detect items on which child pornography files might be stored, he could be called upon in any situation involving an electronic storage device, such as a suspect ditching a cell phone that might contain evidence, Miller said. Nyland can search for items as large as a computer tower or as small as an SD card with a terabyte of storage space.

"That's a lot of data that could just be slid between the pages of a book or hid just about anywhere," Miller said.

In addition, Nyland makes for a positive presence around the department.

"It's a good stress reliever in this job," Miller said this week as some of his fellow officers patted and praised Nyland.

Evan Bevins can be reached at ebevins@newsandsentinel.com.

Starting at /week.