Paw & Order: Haning and Rosco's fight to protect children

Wednesday, December 18, 2024

Media Contact: Mack Burke | Associate Director of Media Relations | 405-744-5540 | editor@okstate.edu

In the criminal justice system, there are two separate yet equally important officers tracking down those who wish to do children harm: Rosco, who finds evidence against the criminal, and John Haning, who brings them to justice. This is their story.

Haning — the human half of the team — is a nine-year investigator lieutenant for the Rogers County Sheriff’s Office, a U.S. Department of Homeland Security task force officer, a doctoral candidate at Oklahoma State University Center for Health Sciences, a husband, a father and now, a K9 handler. 

The son of a U.S. military officer, Haning spent his first 18 years in the Republic of Panama before coming to the United States to attend Rogers State University in Claremore, Oklahoma, and soon entered the banking world. 

But after the attacks on Sept. 11, 2001, Haning felt he could make more of a difference elsewhere.

“I joined law enforcement because it was more interesting to help people than it was to sit in a bank,” Haning said. “I needed a change.” 

Since then, Haning has supervised many different teams and divisions. He has overseen investigators, school resource officers, the crisis intervention team and a drug interdiction team. 

His main passion in law enforcement is working toward ending child exploitation and trafficking. 

According to a recent International Labour Organization study, “A total of 160 million children — 63 million girls and 97 million boys — are in child labor globally, accounting for almost one in 10 of all children worldwide.”

Saved in America, a nonprofit organization in the U.S. that works to find victims of human trafficking, reported there are currently 8 million children reported missing globally.

Haning works daily to combat these staggering numbers, always remembering at the core of these cases are children with their entire lives ahead of them.  

“It’s helping the kids, saving the kids, stopping the cycle of abuse. The earlier intervention that we can get for them, the better it is for them to recover and to become whole in the end,” Haning said. 

Power of the Dog

Rosco — Haning’s canine partner — is a labrador retriever specializing in sniffing out electronic storage devices.

Recently, an organization named OUR Rescue assigned Rosco to Haning. OUR Rescue partners with law enforcement to combat child sexual exploitation and human trafficking worldwide. It funded Rosco’s training with Jordan Detection K9.

“Rosco is trained to detect a chemical sprayed on storage devices or devices that store data,” Haning said. “That chemical is only used on storage devices. He can find these devices as small as a micro SD, about the size of your small fingernail.”  

The chemical is Triphenylphosphine oxide, which is embedded on all devices that store data to prevent overheating.

Haning and Rosco have traveled all over to aid in sexual exploitation cases. Recently, the two traveled to Ecuador, where Rosco found evidence that led to the arrest of a high-profile doctor. 

Similar to his handler, Rosco is trained to assume various roles. As a certified therapy dog, Rosco can also sense when people are stressed and need help calming down in tense situations.  

“When we were in Ecuador, we had a special needs child who was crying and distraught and no one could seem to calm her down,” Haning said. “We brought Rosco in, and he immediately put his head on her lap and leaned on her to help her settle down, and she did.”

Rosco does not just help the victims of these crimes; he also helps the officers working on these cases on a day-to-day basis who deal with secondary trauma. 

“He just walks around the office, and he’ll climb up on their lap. When they’re having a tough conversation with someone on the phone, he’ll hear that tension in there, and he’ll just go over and hang out with them. He’s just a wonderful canine,” Haning said.

Rosco and Haning are not just work partners, they are family, too. Rosco receives a lot of love from the Haning family, goes on vacations, celebrates holidays and even gets requests to play from the neighborhood kids. 

“When we first arrived back from training in Indiana, my daughter quickly adopted him as hers. He sleeps in her bed,” Haning said. “All the neighborhood kids all come over and they’ll ask, ‘Hey, can your daughter come out and play and bring Rosco?’ They would take him out to the field across the street and throw the ball. He just loves kids.”

Changing Beats 

When Haning is not traveling around the globe investigating exploitation cases, he is preparing for life after police work. 

Haning is working toward his doctorate in forensic sciences with OSU-CHS. Following his retirement, Haning plans on using his doctorate to help teach and educate others in law enforcement. 

OSU-CHS’s forensic science program is ideal for working professionals who want to enhance their skills and knowledge to benefit their job performance directly. Haning has been able to dive into the program and learn new things from OSU professors and industry professionals. 

“The knowledge and the people I interact with, like my professors, are just incredible. They’re leaders in their fields and it’s so useful to be able to interact with them as well as the other students,” Haning said. “To be able to communicate and bounce ideas off of them is a tremendous learning experience.” 

Haning had the opportunity to learn from Oklahoma State Bureau of Investigations Special Agent Brad Green. Green served as an OSU-CHS adjunct professor, teaching classes for the forensic sciences department. 

Green, who is also still working in law enforcement, noted how useful it was to have Haning’s insight as someone who is still active in their department. 

“Being in law enforcement, that kind of helped provide a little bit of assistance to some of the other students in the class that had maybe not been in law enforcement or had never worked with law enforcement,” Green said. 

Haning will continue to wear his investigator hat for now, but continuing to learn new concepts and hear from other professionals in his industry has proven invaluable for the next step in his career. 

“Learning new things in forensic science is incredibly helpful. What’s even better is I share the stuff I have learned firsthand  with others, because that’s my ultimate goal, is to help others be successful in their careers and their lives. It’s good work,” Haning said.

Haning has already started his goal in helping others become educated about his area of expertise. Haning and Rosco often visit local Oklahoma schools to perform iGuardian presentations to teach students about internet safety and what to look for to stay safe online. 

Many school districts have started to incorporate the program into their orientations. 

“The more we talk about Rosco and the more we bring them out, I think the safer our kids are,” Haning said. “I think that we are making a difference.”

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Photos by: Gary Lawson

Story by: Page Mindedahl | STATE Magazine