Keynotes
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| 16 Dec |
13:45-14:15 |
Dr Josh Davis Department of Psychology and Counselling, University of Greenwich.
Super-recognisers in the police: An exceptional human resource for the identification of suspects from crime scene images
Facial recognition ability may partly be innate, ranging from those suffering prosopagnosia or face blindness to those labelled as super-recognisers, who seemingly may never forget a face. These extremes may be indicative of a normal distribution of face recognition ability. In recent research, police officers who have identified hundreds of offenders from CCTV images, often of poor quality, with offenders depicted in disguise, completed a series of cognitive tests, designed to test face recognition, simultaneous face matching and general visual memory. Their performance was compared with controls. Some of the officers were far better than the controls on some tests, particularly when attempting to name highly degraded celebrity images, taken many years previously, a cognitively similar task to that of identifying offenders not encountered for many years. Performance at familiar face recognition was correlated with tests of unfamiliar face identification and matching, supporting the proposal that some of
the officers are super-recognisers. All participants were also better at naming moving facial images, although the movement advantage was stronger for the police super-recognisers. The practical implications for the efficient management of crime scene images as well as the identification of probable additional so far "unrecognised" police super-recognisers will be discussed.
Dr Davis joined the Department of Psychology and Counselling at the University of Greenwich as a Senior Lecturer in September 2008. He had previously been awarded a PhD from Goldsmiths, University of London in 2007 on "The Forensic Identification of Unfamiliar People in CCTV Images". He has published empirical research papers and book chapters examining human face recognition and eyewitness identification ability and the methods used by expert witnesses to determine whether two different photographs depict the same individuals or not. He is currently engaged in co-editing a new book on "Forensic Facial Identification: Theory and Practice of Identification from Eyewitnesses, Composites and CCTV" (Wiley Blackwell) due for release in 2014.
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| 17 Dec |
09:10-09:40 |
Sharon Girling OBE
Investigating child abuse images: how technology is closing the net on offenders
In today’s society the offence of child abuse is not only committed as a physical act. Offenders who have never met or actually even seen a specific child victimise them by downloading and sharing their images of abuse across networks and the internet.
This presentation offers an opportunity to learn how law enforcement and support services investigate cases of online child abuse using technology. It will walk you through an examination of a suspect’s computer showing some imaging techniques and how we extract and assess the relevant computer data, using various tools. It will show you methods undertaken to investigate the imaged data, including the thousands of images that are recovered, in an effort to locate the victims of the abuse irrelevant of their country of origin using the networks built over the past decade.
We will also show how using this technology helps us locate and bring to account those responsible for the ever increasing expansion of this abhorrent crime against a vulnerable group in our society.
During a 30 year career as a police officer, Sharon worked at the forefront of the national and international response to online child abuse and developed the processes and procedures that led to the creation of the Child Exploitation and Online Protection (CEOP) Centre
Sharon continues to work in the area of child protection, safeguarding and e-safety and consults for numerous law enforcement agencies globally. She is the child protection advocate for the International Foundation for Online Responsibility and an advisor for Securus Software Ltd. |
| 17 Dec |
10:55-11:20 |
Andrew Rennison, Surveillance Camera Commissioner
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| 17 Dec |
13:45-14:15 |
Mick Neville, Detective Chief Inspector (DCI), Metropolitan Police Service.
Catching Criminals Caught on Camera - How the Met Police is leading the world
DCI Mick Neville will discuss the systematic methods employed by the Metropolitan Police to obtain images of unidentified suspects from CCTV and other media and the reasons why they have the highest identification rate in the world.
DCI Mick Neville has extensive investigative experience, particularly relating to CCTV evidence. He served in the Royal Military Police and joined the Metropolitan Police in 1989. In 1999 the Commissioner commended him for solving a large number of robberies of banks, building societies and Post Offices, utilising CCTV images and informants - and this was start of his CCTV journey. As a Dedicated Informant Controller in south London, he introduced a successful system of using sources to identify suspects in CCTV images. He was the Senior Investigating Officer for the fox hunting demonstration, which occurred in Parliament Square. Much use was made of video and CCTV evidence, and he introduced systems to use victims of offences to view footage. His BSc (Hons) in Policing and Police Studies included research into street crime. He set up the VIIDO (dedicated police "Forensic Image" units) and Met Circulation Unit systems, which continue to make massive improvements in the detection of volume
and
violent crime using CCTV and other forensic images (from mobile phones, cameras etc). He has also worked with businesses to improve their use of CCTV. He was in charge of images on Operation Withern - the investigation into the disorder and rioting across London in August 2011. He famously described the use of CCTV in UK as "an utter fiasco" but has since been instrumental in turning the use of images, including CCTV into the "Third Forensic Discipline". His current role is as head of the Central Forensic Image Team and Met Circulation Unit at New Scotland Yard. This includes the recently set up Area Ident Teams, which have TREBLED the identification rate of suspects "caught on camera". His messages include that courts, not CCTV Control Rooms, are "end users" and that with forensic images people and processes are more important than technology. Furthermore, (in these days of austerity) he sees the use of CCTV as a cheap and effective way to target serious and
volume crime and to target prolific offenders. He has addressed conferences across the world on Forensic Images. |
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