Thumbnail photo by Ken Lund via Wikimedia Commons. Creative Commons License Crescent City Police Chief Richard Griffin credited the purchase of a Cellebrite Forensic Analyzer for being able to help the Curry County Sheriff’s Office track down a Texas man suspected of abusing children. Appearing before the Crescent City Council on Monday, Griffin said that Curry County Sheriff John Ward had posted a press release to his agency’s Facebook page, thanking Crescent City for helping with the forensics in a recent Internet Crimes Against Children Taskforce case. According to Ward’s press release, he and Sgt. Zane Van Zelf arrested 32-year-old Matthew Arthur Anderson at his home in the central part of Curry County on Aug. 7. Gold Beach Police Sgt. David Vershall assisted them. The arrest occurred after the Internet Crimes Against Children Taskforce notified Ward at about 5:37 p.m. that Anderson had a warrant out for his arrest from Montgomery County, Texas and that the suspect was allegedly “engaging in criminal activity” at his home in Curry County. “We also learned that the suspect had immediate access to young children that were believed to be at risk, prompting an urgent response,” Ward said in a statement posted to his agency’s Facebook page on Monday. Van Zelf worked with ICAC, the Oregon Department of Human Service’s Child Welfare division, the Oregon Department of Justice, the Medford Police Department, the Children’s Advocacy Center of Medford, Wally’s House of Curry County and the Crescent City Police Department on the case involving Anderson. As a result, Anderson is facing charges of possession of materials depicting sexually explicit conduct of a child in the first degree, endangering the welfare of a minor and private indecency and attempting to use a child in display of sexually explicit conduct, according to Ward’s press release. Anderson is currently lodged in the Curry County Jail. The sheriff said that his agency learned that Anderson was allegedly in contact with children in multiple jurisdictions “through his previous employment.” “These cases are very complex and require many hours,” Ward said. “We know that with our current staffing level, committing the time to cases like these undoubtedly affects our ability to respond to some of the lower level calls for service, but these cases are of the utmost importance and are an absolute threat to public safety in our community.” On Monday, Griffin told the Crescent City Council that $16,500 in U.S. Department of Homeland Security grant dollars allows him to strengthen the cyber crime unit he established about two years ago. He said it especially helps his agency solve cases he receives from the Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force. The $16,500 will be used to pay annual subscription fees for the Cellebrite Forensic Analyzer, according to a staff report from Griffin and Crescent City Fire & Rescue Chief Kevin Carey. The total annual cost for the analyzer and the subscription fee is about $22,000 with Measure S dollars making up the difference. “What it really does is make [us] a local hub for forensics. We would normally have to send those phones out [for analysis] and maybe get them back in six months, maybe a year,” Griffin said. “We’re doing them onsite now, typically, with a very fast turnaround.” Crescent City Fire & Rescue will use $4,500 in Homeland Security grant dollars to purchase a multi-gas monitoring device. Though his agency won’t use the device on every call they respond to, there are “lives on the line” when they do deploy it. “We’ll be able to monitor for lower explosive limits [of] oxygen, CO2, carbon monoxide and sulfur dioxide, which is a lot of sewer gas type stuff,” Carey said. “The cool thing is we’re going to make it available to all the other fire districts to use. They can call us up and come get it or we can get it out to them.” The Crescent City Council on Monday approved an amendment to the city’s 2025-26 budget, adding the grant-funded multi-gas monitor purchase as a line item in the budget. The Council also authorized City Manager Eric Wier to accept the grant for both the gas monitor and the Cellebrite Foresnic Analyzer subscription.