KINGWOOD — The Preston County Sheriff’s Office was awarded a $38,120 grant by the Homeland Security Grant Program.
The money funds the purchase of a forensic computer program and a new telephone recorder, Melissa Hardy, of the sheriff’s office, told the Preston County Commission.
The forensic program, GrayKey, increased in costs from about $18,000 to about $27,000, Hardy said.
According to GrayShift, the makers of GrayKey, the program is “a state-of-the-art forensic access tool that extracts encrypted or inaccessible data from mobile devices.”
In the grant application, the sheriff’s office said it provides digital forensic services for other law enforcement agencies in Preston County, including municipal police departments and other counties such as Randolph, Taylor and Tucker counties.
With traditional cell phone forensic equipment used by the sheriff’s office, some phones’ data can’t be accessed because the phone is “pass coded,” “locked,” or “pattern locked,” the application states.
The GrayKey software would provide access to that data and allow for “in-depth analysis of the hidden/locked data contained within the phone,” according to the application. The hidden or locked data could be the “smoking gun” needed to solve a crime.
The new telephone recorder is old and in need of replacement. The previous one was left by 911 when they moved and was “way more than we needed,” Hardy said.
The new recorder is much more in line with what the department needs, she said. It can also be run from a computer rather than having to go to the basement and make a tape.
The Total Recall VR System will log incoming calls, provide call recording, monitoring, archiving, searching and replaying, of telephone calls, according to the grant application.
Hardy said the department also has grant applications out for license plate readers and for updated equipment for the SRT team.
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