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Good Dog Busts Bad Man: K-9 Sniffs Out Jared Fogle's Porn Stash

By Christopher Coble, Esq. on August 31, 2015 | Last updated on March 21, 2019

Meet Bear. Bear is a very good dog. Who's a good boy? Bear. Who deserves a treat? Bear does. Because Bear is part of the police team that nailed ex-Subway ad man Jared Fogle on child pornography and underage sex charges.

In fact, without the help of Bear's very, very good dog nose, law enforcement may have lacked the essential evidence necessary to get Fogle's guilty plea. We all owe Bear a belly rub.

Officer Bear

Rescued just a year ago, the 2-year-old black lab is one of five dogs in the nation trained to sniff out electronic data devices. The training took four months to complete, and now Bear can find devices and tiny storage drives that his fellow officers might miss.

Bear had been a law enforcement free agent, working on investigations coast-to-coast including the recent arrest of U.S. gymnastics coach Marvin Sharp on accusations of child molestation. But Bear may have found a more permanent home in the Pacific Northwest: the Seattle Police Department just bought his services full-time to focus on Internet crime solving. Bear's trainer, Anderson, Indiana deputy fire chief Todd Jordan, says he's eager to train more dogs to hunt down electronics media.

On the Case

Bear was brought into the Fogle case and helped officers track down a flash drive that proved vital to the investigation. That drive, along with other digital media recovered from Fogle's house led to the former Subway pitch man's guilty plea earlier this month. Fogle admitted to possessing pornographic films and images of minors, some featuring children as young as six years old.

Thanks to Bear's work and that of numerous other law enforcement officials, Fogle is looking at 5 to 12 years in prison. And Bear is looking for someone to scratch his ears. The left one especially. Oh yeah -- that's the spot.

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