Digital forensics a crime-solving game-changer

Pictured are Sheriff Leon Lott and Maj. Ricky Johnson

Richland County Sheriff’s Department points to mobile-phone forensics as “vital asset” in recent homicide-solving successes

By W. Thomas Smith Jr.

Recent national reports of the Richland County Sheriff’s Department’s (RCSD) successes in solving 100-percent of all homicide cases (80 murder cases in fact since 2023) beg the question: How? Broad investigative team effort, including an intelligence and analysis unit which is second to none; strong community support; and technologies to include ballistics, forensics, and in-house tech services.

As part of in-house tech services: “Having a full-time digital forensics unit has been an absolute game-changer for criminal investigations as a whole,” said RCSD Major Ricky E. Johnson with the department’s Criminal Investigations Division. “We are not in the business of forensically guessing.”

According to Johnson: “We’re getting between 20-25 cell-phones a week, the majority of which are from investigators.”

That’s when Johnson’s team of six (including himself) examiners and technicians immediately get to work preserving the phone data (though the on-scene deputies and investigators play key roles in the initial preservation of seized phones), extract the data, and then analyze the data.

PRESERVATION IS VITAL

Unlike computer forensics wherein evidence is static – stopped and not moving in-or-out – “phones are living systems; essentially a radio frequency transceiver designed to be in constant, autonomous communication with external networks,” says Johnson. “So every second after seizure can impact what data survives and what does not.”

Johnson, a 19-year veteran of RCSD and a former task force officer with DEA, adds: “Because we can do everything in-house, we have the equipment and trained personnel to do everything at our lab, and our lab does mobile forensics, to include fixing and repairing broken, damaged, or otherwise inoperable devices, vehicle forensics, and video forensics.”

THE DIGITAL FORENSICS UNIT

Johnson’s six-person team is singularly dedicated to the digital forensics component of any given case. His team learns the particulars of the case and immediately becomes part of the broader investigative team working the case.

“As mentioned, we have had a 100-percent solvability rate on homicides over the past three years,” says Johnson. “But the digital forensics unit has also helped bring closure to families of missing people, solved car break-ins, commercial and residential burglaries, sexual related crimes, financial crimes, you name it.”

Richland County Sheriff Leon Lott said: “Our investment in digital forensics and other investigations-related technologies to include the employment of the best people and excellent training they receive is an enormous crime-solving element that the public by-and-large is not aware of.”

DIGITAL FORENSICS WORKS

“Criminals will lie,” says Johnson. “The data does not. And it’s not simply if someone did something, but if they did not.”

Fact is everybody has a cell phone, some people have more than one. The current U.S. population numbers are just over 343-million people, whereas in 2025 there were a total of 417-million active cellular phone-connections across the United States. That’s tens-of-millions more phone connections than there are people.

“So the probability of us seeing a phone is extremely high,” says Johnson.

THE DIGITAL FOOTPRINT

All digital activity leaves evidence of one’s interaction or traces of the evidence. Sounds complicated? It isn’t. Though the work for RCSD investigators and technicians to preserve, extract, and analyze the data sometimes is.

“A mobile device aka ‘smartphone’ is not simply a communications tool,” says Johnson. “The smartphone has become the primary witness in legal proceedings, offering an objective, time-stamped narrative of human behavior. Smartphones are digital witnesses in modern criminal investigations. Therefore the reporting of digital evidence is crucial and must be conducted in a manner that is legally admissible and scientifically reproducible.”

Johnson adds: “Leaders of police agencies must invest in a unit like this moving forward if they haven’t already. There is a digital footprint for almost everything nowadays. Invest in equipment, but more importantly, invest in PEOPLE with training and involvement, and the rest will take care of itself.”

– For more information about the Richland County Sheriff’s Department, please visit https://www.rcsd.net/.