Ray County Sheriff Scott Childers, Undersheriff Steve Mendoza, and Detective Josh Hamner requested $19,000 for a Cellebrite program from the Ray County Law Enforcement Restitution Funds (LERF). The LERF board unanimously approved the $19,000 to the sheriff’s department from the $75,000 funds. Cellebrite is a forensic device used to extract data from cell phones. “It will allow us to extract cell phones in-house instead of sending them to the FBI regional lab,” said Mendoza. He added that the FBI’s Heart of America Regional Computer Forensics Lab usually has a six-month turnaround to return the results of the phone extraction, “and sometimes it’s months before they can even start to look at it.” Childers, Mendoza and Hamner are all certified to use the equipment. “We are going to start our own Crimes Against Children Task Force (CACTF) and we got $127,000 given to us by the state by the State Cyber Crimes Grant (SCCG),” said Childers. “It pays for 20% of Josh’s salary, and gives us…