Inside the police team helping investigate crimes in a digital age
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It is 4am, on a chilly December morning. Officers from West Midlands Police quietly approach a row of terraced houses in Birmingham. Under the glow of a street light, one uses his battering ram to break down the front door of one of the houses. As they file in, they are looking for a woman suspected of drug dealing - and her mobile phone.
They quickly find her in a bedroom and tell her "that phone is going to be seized because we believe it has evidence on it so if we think you've got potential to wipe that phone and we're not going to allow that to happen". Back at force headquarters in central Birmingham, the force's digital forensics manager Gavin Green tells me that they have seized more than 4,000 phones and computers for analysis in the last year alone.
The devices have helped them solve anything from shoplifting cases, to rapes and murders. 'Reckless' man jailed after brandishing deactivated AK-47 in video on X during summer riots. Flats catch fire after car rammed into Birmingham shop in suspected arson attack.
Man charged after boy , 2, dies in car crash in Smethwick. "In the past we were looking at the old fashioned Nokia burner type phones that had a limited amount of data but it's developed - with a smart phone, you're looking at a mini computer that holds a lot of personal data such as the location those people have been, you look at your iPhones for example you see the iOS updating on a near weekly, monthly basis so we have to stay abreast of those changes," he said.
