The Knox County Prosecutor’s Office has secured a state grant that carries the potential to completely change the way local crimes are prosecuted.
County prosecutor Dirk Carnahan announced this week that his office, under the leadership of paralegal and program coordinator Jocelyn Gadberry, received a more than $107,000 grant from the Indiana Criminal Justice Institute aimed at developing a local cyber crimes unit.
The grant, one from the 2021 Edward Byrne Memorial Justice Assistance Program, will go toward the purchase of equipment, specifically computers, and software licenses, all meant to give local law enforcement officers and investigators the ability to extract information from digital devices like smartphones and even fitness trackers.
“There is so much stuff available that we’re not getting,” Carnahan said. “I attended some training recently and saw, first-hand, some of the electronic evidence that is available.
“And the reason is that the software programs necessary to get that evidence are so expensive; the only alternatives are to look at state police, the FBI or some other agency with a big enough budget to afford it. We have to rely on others if we want to see the contents of a phone or a person’s location at a certain time. We’d have to send that off to agencies with long waiting lists. And they’re selective on who they take.”
Such actions have only been warranted, he said, in “a really big case.”
But not anymore, he added.
The prosecutor’s office has partnered both with the Vincennes Police Department and Vincennes University in launching its own cyber crimes unit.
The lab will be set up inside VPD headquarters, and VU students — whether they be majoring in homeland security or even computer science, among others — will be able to apply for internships.
The interns will work alongside police officers in undergoing the training necessary to extract information from these digital devices.
It’s a program only the third of its kind in the country, Carnahan said.
“The people who extract this information don’t have to be police officers,” he said. “The people best at doing that sort of thing are typically people with different backgrounds, computer training, that sort of thing.
“Interns will move through this program, be trained to do this and will train police officers along the way. Then they’ll be able to go on to take these kinds of jobs elsewhere.”
Carnahan said information from a person’s digital device has become a driving — if not vital — resource in prosecuting times.
Most everyone, he pointed out, has a digital device, whether it be a cell phone or a Fitbit or Apple Watch, on them at all times.
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