CONTACT : HTCU@Tippecanoe.IN.gov
HTCU Members
- Purdue University Cyber Forensics Department
- Purdue University International Center for Biometric Research
- Tippecanoe County Prosecutors Office
- Lafayette Police Department
- West Lafayette Police Department
- Purdue University Police Department
- Tippecanoe County Sheriff’s Department
- Tippecanoe County Community Corrections
- Tippecanoe County Probation Department
HTCU Mission Statement
The Tippecanoe County High Tech Crime Unit (HTCU) is a collaboration of local law enforcement agencies and Purdue University to provide investigative resources when examining with various forms of digital evidence. Purdue’s partnership provides students great opportunities for real world experience, research topics, software development, and digital forensics training.
About the HTCU
In 2008, Prosecutor Pat Harrington recognized the value of digital evidence in law enforcement investigations and being able to present valuable unbiased information in court. Harrington hired his first digital forensics investigator specialized in digital evidence to help obtain the valuable date information for investigations.
In 2009, The Tippecanoe County Prosecutors Office became an affiliate member of the Indiana ICAC (Internet Crimes Against Children) Task Force run by the Indiana State Police Cyber Crime Unit. ICAC is nationwide collaboration of federal, state, and local law enforcement agencies to investigate CSAM (Child Sexual Abuse Material) aka “child pornography”, child solicitation, molestation, and human trafficking cases. The Indiana State Police assigns all NCMEC (National Center for Missing and Exploited Children) CyberTips determined to possibly in the Tippecanoe County Area to the Prosecutors Office to be investigated. The Prosecutors Office investigates the case and determines the local jurisdiction agency to finish the case. Cases are reviewed by the Prosecutors Office for state charges or forwarded to the US Attorney’s Office for federal prosecution.
In 2011, Prosecutor Pat Harrington created the first High Tech Crime Unit (HTCU) run by a Prosecutors Office in the State of Indiana. The prosecutor’s office presented a MOU to local agencies to officially create the High Tech Crime Unit and combine resources to investigate cases with digital evidence. This was done due to the high cost of equipment, software, and specialized training needed for the examiners. All the locally agencies also joined the Indiana ICAC Task Force. The HTCU has added three members since the original MOU. The HTCU is utilized to process digital evidence from almost any type of investigation such as child pornography and molestation, child neglect, vehicle crashes, domestic violence, drug investigations, murder, robbery, theft, fraud, and many more. In 2016, Purdue University provided a secure location in Discovery Park to centralize all the resources for the HTCU. The HTCU has discovered valuable evidence for prosecution to obtain convictions at trial and increase plea agreements thus reducing the trial congestion. This saves the county money.
