St. Joseph Police Department Taps Into Phone Forensics

It`s an added accessory...it`s the way you communicate...it`s your cell phone. And now it`s a way to crack crime cases. Cell phones these days aren`t just made for communication... now they`re made to fit you lifestyle. "You can sometimes get a feel for a person lifestyle based on the music...who they talk to what activities they do...the time of day that they`re up," says Det. Curtis Howard, St. Jo Police Deptartment. A reason why- over the past six months the St. Joseph Police Department has been advancing its technology and now working more with what they call " cell phone forensics." "As a police officer we have to start looking at other ways to get evidence and phones. Forensics and video cameras...all those things is starting to become an everyday occurance for us like fingerprints used to be," says Howard. Detectives say they can even recover your deleted text messages, calls, and videos. It`s a thorough way to nab the bad guys....and so far detectives say it`s a system that works. But being able to do all this isn`t always easy...it can take minutes....or maybe even hours. It`s done by hooking the cell phone up to a computer to read its data. "That`s the tricky part to cellular phone forensics, it`s getting the phone to communicate with our computer and the software is difficult...because all of these phones are manufactured differently," adds Howard. And as phone techonology advances...cell phone forensics follows. Detectives say now is too early to tell how many cases have been solved with cell phone forensics. But they say in many cases it`s a crucial key in the investigative process