The Associated Press
ALBUQUERQUE, N.M (AP) - The latest weapons in the battle against crime: a keyboard and a mouse.
“Six or seven years ago, people rarely touched a computer,” said state police Sgt. Miguel Aguilar, who heads the department’s computer forensics unit. “Now people can’t go a day without jumping on the Internet. If someone were to commit a crime, it’s likely they may go to the computer.”
State police ran a one-man computer forensics unit in Santa Fe for the past three years, but with more cases involving computers, the department has added three more investigators - in Santa Fe, Albuquerque and Las Cruces.
The officers investigate child pornography, fraud and identity theft.
Each forensic examiner has a computer with software that helps gather evidence from other computers.
“A few years ago, when you go to a murder scene, the computer was the last thing you would look at for evidence,” Aguilar said. “Now it is one of the first things you look at.”
Currently, the unit is investigating a case in which a New Mexico man is accused of using an online auction site to obtain credit card information from people who thought they were buying something. Officers were able to find the man, and when they looked at his computer they found several credit card numbers in his hard drive, Aguilar said.