Dogs have long been trained to sniff out drugs and bombs. Now they’re uncovering cells phones being smuggled into prisons in Connecticut, Virginia and Maryland, the Associated Press reported. Rhianna, a 22-month-old yellow Labrador, is working to eliminate cell phones being illegally brought into prisons in Connecticut. Twenty-three cell phones were seized from the state’s 18 prisons last year. "The inmates see it. It's a deterrent just knowing that we have a dog that's going to do it," Deputy Warden Joseph Chapdelaine, commander of the agency's canine unit, told the Associated Press. "So, they're going to be thinking. They know we have dogs that find narcotics, so that's a deterrent, too." Normally, inmates can only receive screened mail or make telephone calls that are taped and monitored by prison workers. Having cell phones allows prisoners to by pass these security measures. Dogs are good at finding cell phones because scanning devices are not reliable or consistent, officials said. The dogs are trained to sniff out a scent common to all types of cell phones. Officials would not identify the scent. A convicted inmate in Texas made threatening calls in October to a state senator on the Senate Criminal Justice Committee. The call led to a prison lockdown across the state and a search that turned up hundreds of cell phones. In Baltimore, a drug dealer allegedly planned the death of a witness by using a cell phone he smuggled into a city jail. Other reports have cropped up around the nation, as well. Inmates were using cell phones for gang activity, drug activity and financial crimes. Source: Associated Press
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