Tacoma Police Department goes back to school to teach digital crime fighting

The Tacoma Police Department is going back to school to teach students at the University of Washington Tacoma how to crack the technology of mobile devices to solve crimes.

The new three-course offering in mobile digital forensics gets underway next month. It’s the brainchild of Tacoma Police Detective John Bair, who will teach the classes.

Rob Friedman, the executive director at the university’s Institute of Technology, says what makes the partnership unique is that Bair approached the school.

“It wasn’t to ease the workload. It was to build a wider group of people who can do what he does,” Friedman says.

The students will use the latest technology and study actual criminal case examples and forensic techniques to conduct the complex investigations.

Mobile digital forensics is an emerging field that focuses on both technology and legal issues to give investigators the data they need to withstand court challenges.

“If there’s a crime that takes place and there’s information on the phone of the perpetrator and there’s a warrant that’s issued that can lead to the extraction of that information, then there’s a much more solid case that can be built,” Friedman says.

Bair is one of only a handful of mobile forensic experts in the country. But Bair and Friedman hope the school can become a center that develops future experts who can work in either the South Sound or elsewhere to expand the talent pool for law enforcement agencies facing ever-increasing challenges in fighting crime.