Fighting cyber crimes with evidence found on mobile devices will help law enforcement clear cases much quicker, a Cass County investigator said Monday.
Cody Sartor, Chief Criminal Investigator for Cass County District Attorney's Office, has just returned from the National Computer Forensics Institute (NCFI) in Hoover, Ala., where he trained for four weeks.
On Monday, he shared highlights of what he learned with visiting Rep. John Ratcliffe (R-Texas) at the Cass County Law Enforcement Center.
"It's been a big boom for us. It is totally going to change the way we process things," Sartor said.
Ratcliffe was visiting to discuss his bill that has just been sent to President Donald Trump's desk: the Strengthening State and Local Cyber Crime Fighting Act (H.R. 1616).
The bill provides state and local law enforcement with the tools and training they need to combat cyber crime and protect their communities, Ratcliffe said.
The NCFI in Hoover, Ala., is widely recognized as the premier cyber crime training center in the nation. The NCFI has trained more than 6,250 local officials from all 50 states and three U.S. territories. Its graduates represent more than 2,000 agencies nationwide, including multiple agencies in Texas' Fourth District.
Sartor said mobile devices are impacting every type of crime investigators work, from drug cases to human trafficking.
"This information and equipment can help us do in hours and days, what used to take weeks and months," he said.
He said it should be especially helpful in speeding up cases that are backlogged at the state crime lab.
October is Cybersecurity Awareness Month.