This article details SR testing for police officers in Baden-Wurttemberg, a state in south-west Germany. The article is in German, with an English translation below. Super Recognition continues to spread across the globe!
Polizei etabliert „Super-Recogniser“: Baden-Württemberg.de (baden-wuerttemberg.de)
The Baden-Württemberg police established so-called "Super Recognizers" across the board. They can memorize faces well above average and use this ability to support investigations. Only one to two percent of the population are suitable for super-recognizers. “The investigations into the night of the Stuttgart riot in June 2020 have very special challenges. It's about violent criminals and rioters who committed crimes indiscriminately, under cover of darkness, individually or in small groups. The police brought light into the darkness here - among other things by relying on the special skills of their officers. From the beginning, the investigators at the Stuttgart police headquarters used so-called super recognizers. These are people who have outstanding skills in memorizing and recognizing faces or individual parts of their faces. This is an innate talent that only around two percent of the population have. Many people don't even know that they have these skills, ”said Deputy Prime Minister and Interior Minister Thomas Strobl. Super recognizer in action after the night of the riot “The success of the Super Recognizers is obvious: a significant number of the approximately 130 suspects identified so far from the night of the riot can be traced back to the skills of these officers. In order to be able to adequately appreciate their performance, one also has to be aware of the quality of the underlying recordings - they are taken in dynamic situations, often blurred, in the dark, and faces can only be seen briefly and partially. The success of the Super Recognizers, who are supported by the experts for photo comparisons at the Forensic Institute, is all the more remarkable. Proof that we are pulling out all the stops to finally arrest all of the perpetrators of the night of the riot, ”said Minister Thomas Strobl. The Stuttgart Police Headquarters has taken on a pioneering role in the use of super-recognizers, which has been doing the preparatory work for the nationwide operation in cooperation with the University of Greenwich in London since March 2018. The starting point there was the finding that a small group of police officers were above average at recognizing people on surveillance cameras. Test procedure at the Police College “Baden-Württemberg is one of the safest countries in the republic. Crime is at its lowest level since 1984. In 2020, our police cleared up a total of 64 percent of all criminal offenses in Baden-Württemberg. This is the best clear-up rate since the early 1960s! But nobody rests on these very good figures, we are constantly working on an ever better police force. In order to identify even more unknown perpetrators in the future, especially of criminal offenses in public spaces, we are implementing current research findings and are now intensifying the use of super-recognizers at the Baden-Württemberg police. To this end, we are now establishing an identification procedure for so-called super-recognizers at the Baden-Württemberg Police College for prospective police officers, ”the Minister of the Interior continued. As a result of the test procedure at the Baden-Wuerttemberg Police University, all regional police headquarters will receive identified super recognizers via the regular distribution procedure from this spring, which they can use in a targeted manner. And thanks to the major recruitment campaign, the police can also draw on considerable personnel potential here. In future, every graduate of the Baden-Wuerttemberg Police University will be able to find out whether he or she is a Super Recognizer, "emphasized the President of the Baden-Wuerttemberg Police University, Martin Schatz:" These colleagues are for the police a great enrichment and ultimately an important building block for the security of citizens in the country. " Valuable support for the police “If we have people in our ranks with such talent, we want to use them for effective law enforcement. With a multi-stage test procedure, we are therefore looking for those among our budding police officers who have this talent. This potential will help us to identify more criminals and thus bring them to justice, ”emphasized Minister Thomas Strobl. The Baden-Württemberg Police University has launched an internal advertising campaign specifically for the voluntary test procedure. The participants are assessed in three stages with individual cognitive abilities for memorizing and recognizing faces or individual parts of the face in the areas of short-term, long-term, face comparison and from crowds. The first test phase of the three-part test has already been completed, the second phase is currently running. Several hundred participants have already been tested. Those who have completed the first test phase also take part in the second phase. Only those police officers who have previously achieved excellent results will be invited to the third and final test phase. Due to the corona pandemic, the test procedure takes place entirely online.