What does a cellphone smell like‾ Sharon Read of All States K-9 Detection isn't quite sure, 'We don't know what the dogs are smelling. But we can take out pieces like plastic, a battery, a SIM card, to learn their individual smells. So, it's like baking bread when you are training the dogs. We smell butter, yeast, certain components. But the dog can smell all of it.'
CSO Online reported that her dogs are used in prisons to ferret out cellphones hidden under mattresses, in freezers, vending machines and carved out books. The phones are considered as dangerous in prison as contraband drugs. Inmates get phones by a number of methods:
smuggled by visitors, sold by crooked guards or thrown over the prison wall. Once inside they are used to coordinate any manner of crimes on the outside from threatening witnesses, planning escapes and drug trafficking.
Read pointed out that 'nine times out of ten if you find a cellphone, you also find drugs - it all kind of goes together.'