One of the newest members of the Bloomington Police Department is getting some unique training.

Floki is part of the K9 unit and is one of the few dogs in the country that is trained in electronic detection.

“You can pretty much get him to do anything for food or a ball,” said Jared Peterson, K9 handler and officer with the Bloomington Police Department. “It’s hundreds and hundreds of reps and when he gets to that scent he gets a reward.”

Peterson says Floki is a one-and-a-half-year-old Belgian Malinois and they’re busy working together to detect mass media storage devices.

“It’s a chemical compound that’s in all of electronic storage devices, so hard drives, flash drives, sim cards, SD cards,” Peterson said.

In most cases applied to search warrants, finding and uncovering what’s on these devices can lead to solving some very serious crimes.

“It could be a financial crimes case, or a child pornography case, where we know on a flash drive that’s this big can hold thousands and thousands of files and images,” Peterson said.

During Floki’s search, if you notice a change in behavior like scratching, a wagging tail, or breathing hard it likely means he found something. Peterson says if he sits, then he probably located the scent.

“You could hide it in a ceiling tile, behind a trim board, or you could hide it in the tank of a toilet, and on a regular search warrant, it can be really hard to detect,” Peterson said.

There are other K9s in Minnesota trained in electronic detection, like Sota from the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension. But Peterson says what makes Floki unique is that he’s also trained in human detection while on patrol.

“It is very rare, most of the electronic scent detection dogs are single-purpose dogs, meaning that’s all they’re trained for is to do that,” Peterson said.

Whether it’s on duty or at home, Floki is part of the family. Once he’s officially certified in this area in a few months, Peterson can’t wait to see how all of Floki’s energy can have a major impact.

“It’s a lot of work but if he were to be the dog that finds a piece of evidence that made a case that helped save human trafficking victims or victims of child pornography or even financial crime victims, that’d be very important to me,” Peterson said.