The Andalusia Police Department’s Sgt. Mike Hayden recently spent a month at National Computer Forensic Institute in Hoover to earn certification as a mobile device examiner.
While Hayden has been extracting data from computers for years, he said defense attorneys now question cell phone and other mobile device evidence if it isn’t recovered by investigators with mobile certification.
The class taught law enforcement officers not only the technical skills necessary for recovering data, but also how to draft court orders and search warrants for mobile devices, and legal issues applicable to digital evidence for mobile devices.
Participants also received the equipment needed to extract data – including a microscope, soldering tool, laptop, and ramsey bag, which blocks signals to phones.
Between those tools and a tool kit he already had in house, he said, the APD can extract data from any cell phone made in the past 20 years. It doesn’t matter if the phone is locked, or even if it’s spent a few days at the bottom of the river.
“Basically, you dry them out, clean them up, and go to work,” he said. “You can even recover data from phones that have been shot with bullets.”
Additional classes are available to qualify law enforcement officers to analyze the data that is recovered, he said.
Every digital file has a unique hash set, Hayden said. When retrieving data from cell phones and other mobile devices, the important thing is to retrieve it in a way that the results could be duplicated.
APD Chief Paul Hudson said having the equipment and training gives the APD the ability to analyze cell phones in house instead of having to send them to a lab, which can cause a delay in working cases.
“With the training, Sgt. Hayden can assist other departments in the county and surrounding counties,” Hudson said. “It is not often that we have an opportunity to receive this training and have an officer within the department that has the knowledge to learn and utilize what they have learned, we have that in Sgt. Hayden.”
Hayden said he started working with computers in the 1980s, when he’d buy old computers and reprogram them.
After serving in the military, he moved from Chattanooga to Andalusia to work at The Charter House. He also had a karate studio.
“When the Charter House sold, Sgt. (Bubba) Bailey came by the studio and said, ‘You’re good with kids. We need some officers, why don’t you come talk to the chief?’
“It’s one of those things I think God led me to,” Hayden said. “The door opened, and I got to step through it.”
Hayden was next in line for a sergeant’s job in 2007, when was deployed with the Navy Reserve in Operation Iraqi Freedom. When he returned, he got an opportunity to take over the department’s technical responsibilities previously handled by Matt Mancil, who left to take a state job.