Earlier this month, I attended a class on gang activity and gang interdiction led by a Sergeant in the San Francisco Police Department Street Crimes Unit. My instructor works a gang unit in a sector of the city in which the Norteños and Sureños are the two rivals seeking primacy over the neighborhood. During the three-hour seminar, my classmates and I were shown dozens upon dozens of images of criminal activity taking place. We saw pictures with the entire roster for those gangs flashing their signs and brandishing their weapons. These were high-quality photos — not grainy screen grabs from 1980s-era surveillance cameras!
The Sergeant, whose name I’ll leave out of this for his security, laughed as he said, “I love these guys. They love to take pictures of themselves with their cell phones. The really stupid ones post them up on MySpace and Facebook or one of their own ‘netbanging’ sites, but even the ones who don’t — well, we get a good look at their phones when we make an arrest.”
Some time ago, I connected with Rick Graham, a retired Chief of Detectives for Jacksonville (Fla.) Sheriff’s Office. Graham told me, “Effective communication when conducting business — legitimate and illegitimate — is an absolute necessity. Every self-respecting criminal is carrying and using some type of electronic communication device — Blackberry, iPhone, Android, iPad, Notebooks, what have you. These particular type devices when examined properly can prove to be of great value to an investigator who is working at building a case against a perpetrator, be it a drug trafficker, money launderer, or homicide suspect.”
The photos taken on most Smartphones have GPS data associated with them, unless the user has gone to the trouble of switching the GPS locator off for the camera on the device. Some criminals are figuring this out, but not all. Those images also usually have the time and date information stored, and this data is even harder to hide than the location information.
In addition to incriminating photos, the internal hard drive of a bad guy’s mobile phones also contains a treasure trove of known associates in the contacts list. The call log shows the chain of communication among those contacts. The SMS (text) messages folder similarly will contain potential evidence among co-conspirators.
Career criminals — particularly gang members and those involved in ‘organized’ crime — seem to always want the ‘latest and greatest’ mobile phones to conduct their ‘business.’ This gives police investigators an outstanding avenue for criminal investigations if they know how to safely, securely, and correctly get the data. Therein lies the key. Done right, it can make your case. Done wrong, well, it could break your case.
“If an investigator is given the appropriate training and understanding pertaining to electronic forensic examination, evidence collection, and preservation,” Graham explained, “the investigator will be properly equipped to discover the vast amount of valuable evidence... Knowing the potential evidence exists is only half the battle, knowing how to properly retrieve the information is obviously a critical part of the investigation. Electronic evidence can easily be destroyed, erased, or overwritten if not accessed and collected properly. Data that is stored internally on a phone is constantly overwritten, and if not accessed properly, may be forever lost.”
Graham concluded, “When possible, solicit the assistance of a trained forensic examiner with the collection of electronic information that may prove to be of evidentiary value. Do not take the risk of losing valuable information by improperly accessing the device.”
“The Supreme Court decision in Finley versus United States gave us the ability to search a criminal’s cell phone incident to arrest,” said my SFPD instructor at the midway point in our class. But be advised that you must also be cognizant of how that decision is interpreted in your P&P manuals. You don’t need to be reminded that an investigator can work well within the boundaries of Constitutional law but outside the lines of department policy and procedure. Which brings up one more thing about which you probably don’t need to be reminded. Evidence collection 101 — chain of custody protocols — must always be followed and documented.
