With the help of an upgraded piece of equipment, city police Detective Michael Grossi was able to discern in less than a minute Monday that his superior officer had 93 text messages and 512 e-mails listed on his Blackberry.
He could also individually read each one. If any had been deleted, Grossi could have accessed the contents.
“With these tools we can interpret the data and get it off the phone,” said Lt. James Wardwell, who turned over his BlackBerry for the demonstration. “Right now he’s connected and sucking the data off. It took him about a minute to retrieve the data and hand me back my phone.”
If any of the information had contained child pornography, the quick analysis time could prevent a child from being molested again. That’s what Heather Steele. president and CEO of the Innocent Justice Foundation, was hoping for when she arranged for the city police department to receive two $2,500 grants from the Michael Bolton Charities, Inc. and the J. Walton Bissell Foundation earlier this year.
The police “are the vanguard of people who understand what these crimes are,” Steele said. “With the Internet it has exploded, but a lot of chief and command officers didn’t understand and chose to put their resources in things like burglary or homicides.”
Steele’s California-based non-profit organization connects law enforcement agencies in need of tools and training to investigate crimes against children with charities who are willing to fill the funding gap.
She was on hand Monday along with Jacqueline Smaga from Michael Bolton Charities and Dan Anthony from the West-Hartford based J. Walton Bissell Foundation to accept recognition from the city for their contribution and tour the department’s Digital Forensics lab to view the investigative techniques that their money helped buy.
“Our unit is probably the best in the state,” Mayor Timothy Stewart told the visitors minutes before he awarded them with plaques for their participation. “We started several years ago, way before most other departments. They’ve solved some pretty interesting cases, not just for our department, but for others as well.”
The department used the money to purchase upgrades to two pieces of equipment used to analyze mobile digital devices including BlackBerries, iPhones and other cell phones. Detectives must either obtain consent from the owner or a search warrant before they can search the digital devices, police said.
Wardwell created the digital unit in the 1990s as computer technology was increasingly becoming a factor in crimes and criminal investigations.
