Since the program began, Our Rescue has sponsored and provided 162 Electronic Storage Detection (ESD) K9s to law enforcement agencies across the U.S., Canada, and around the world. In Pennsylvania, eight ESD K9s have been placed with law enforcement agencies.
Trained to detect a chemical compound used to manufacture electronic storage devices, these highly specialized dogs give investigators a critical edge in the search for hidden evidence of child sexual abuse material (CSAM), which many times is small enough to slip past even the most thorough human searches.
In Pennsylvania, three of these ESD K9s are proving just how vital that edge can be.
ESD K9 Mac: Uncovering Crimes by Unlikely Predators
Deployed across multiple searches for law enforcement in Bucks and Montgomery Counties, ESD K9 Mac, with Horsham Township Police Department, has repeatedly located storage devices containing CSAM evidence that led to arrests few would have predicted. In one case, the perpetrator was a woman; in another, a teaching assistant and youth soccer coach. Mac’s work is a reminder that abusers don’t fit a single profile, and that the evidence to stop them is often hiding in plain sight.
ESD K9 Tango: Finding Key Evidence Amid Chaos
ESD K9 Tango, with York County Regional Police, has been deployed in 17 CSAM-related searches locating laptops, hard drives, USB drives, and SD cards, among other types of storage devices in 2026. He has found devices inside cluttered, disorganized residential homes where evidence could easily be overlooked. In one search, Tango led his handler to a drawer holding two cell phones that were concealed inside a container of diaper wipes. For investigators working through chaotic scenes, Tango’s nose does what a visual search alone cannot, turning a room full of clutter into a room full of leads.
ESD K9 Doug: Delivering Justice for the Most Vulnerable
Across searches initiated by county and state law enforcement agencies, ESD K9 Doug, with Lycoming County District Attorney’s Office, has helped uncover evidence central to prosecuting several disturbing cases including a woman allegedly in possession of CSAM involving an infant, a former campus security guard, and a registered sex offender. The devices Doug alerted his handler to included laptops, cell phones, and other storage media and were, in some instances, suspected of being used to disseminate illegal images of child sexual abuse.
ESD K9s like Doug specialize in finding the evidence that’s easiest to miss like tiny SD cards and USB drives tucked into trash cans or buried in dense clutter, often deliberately and painstakingly hidden from investigators.
A Tool Human Searches Can’t Replace
What Mac, Tango, and Doug have in common is the sophistication of their training and the results it delivers. In environments where evidence is as small as a pinpoint hidden camera and may be scattered or intentionally (cleverly) concealed, ESD K9s allow law enforcement to conduct more thorough, detailed searches than would otherwise be possible. In the fight to protect children from exploitation, that difference can be the one thing that brings a perpetrator to justice and a child victim to safety. Every second counts and Our Rescue’s ESD K9s are hard at work on the frontlines of the fight against child exploitation.
In addition to finding what may be key evidence in a case, our ESD K9s are trained therapy dogs, capable of sensing when a child victim or an investigator working on a CSAM case may need comfort. These highly intelligent, remarkably trained K9s serve a dual purpose: assisting law enforcement with uncovering evidence and standing in as a source of quiet, gentle comfort and stability for those who need it most.
