Police Hope GPS-Tracked Pig Carcass Help Find Missing Bodies in River
25 Feb 2014The Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) get smart and use a pig carcass with GPS tracking to try and find missing persons in the nearby river, as reported by CTV News Saskatoon.
It is not uncommon for police forces to use global positioning software (GPS) for tracking living animals to learn about their daily habits, movements, and location, but this is one of the first times an animal not living has been tracked.
In this case, it is to help the Royal Canadian Mounted Police find missing persons.
A 180-pound pig carcass had a GPS tracking device strapped to it and was pushed into the South Saskatchewan River located in Saskatoon, Canada. With the GPS tracking software, the Saskatoon Historical Case Unit (HCU) can track its location down the river, including looking at data about how fast it goes, when it stops, and its general direction.
The mission of this project is to help the RCMP learn more about how bodies move in the river when they are dumped there. In the future, they hope that it aid them in a more efficient search for bodies in the river.
During the first phase of the GPS tracking project, a pig carcass was dropped into the North side of the Saskatchewan River in North Battleford. Here, the RCMP watched the location and movement of the pig until about a week later when it was found stopped on a sand bar, located approximately 20 kilometers from its original location.
The second phase of the project looks at the flow and level of water in the river. They will not only study the flow and level of the water, but how the weather affects where the pig ends up.
Cpl. Tyler Handland and his team at HCU have been tracking bodies missing since the 1980s. This includes six in the South Saskatchewan River and five in the North Saskatchewan River. One body they are looking for is that of Gregory Myles MacIntosh who has been missing since his bachelor party two weeks prior, and was supposed to be getting married.
The reason police believe his body to be missing in the water is because they found blood near the Saskatchewan river after having been told someone was seen falling in the ice the night he went missing. Police believe a fight at a pub earlier that night might be related to his disappearance. According to Hadland, they hope to find his and other missing bodies through this GPS tracking project.
Hadland also told reporters that where the bodies end up is one of the biggest mysteries, leading them to painting a pig carcass a neon orange color and strapping it with a GPS tracking device. The bright color helps them find the carcass when it stops and more easily retrieve it.
If they can at least recover the bodies of missing persons, they can give their grieving families some type of closure.
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