According to IHS, there were 245 million professionally installed video surveillance cameras active and operational globally in 2014. The question is – what were these cameras producing? Were they preventing crime or detecting crime? The stark fact is that no one really knows.
This has all changed at New Scotland Yard where the Metropolitan Police are committed to revolutionising, industrialising and professionalising the use of CCTV to ensure it starts to produce results.
The Met are aided in this work by 3rd Forensic Limited who are the owners and producers of the ground-breaking FILM solution. FILM is a forensic imaging and linking management system which has proved effective in helping to convict thousands of criminals and improve crime prevention across the Metropolitan Police. FILM enables the Met Police to store, categorise, manage and link all its images of unidentified suspects in one place – too often, in other police forces, images are left to individual officers and cannot be used to their maximum potential. This results in the CCTV images produced by security professionals working in CCTV control rooms not being fully used, with little if any feedback given.
At Scotland Yard, images now belong to the Forensic Department and are managed in the same manner as fingerprints and DNA. Hence police managers know, as with fingermarks and DNA crime samples, how many have been found, how many have been identified and, working with the Crown Prosecution, how many have resulted in conviction. This strict performance management has brought a new rigour into the way that local police supervisors ensure that image identifications have been dealt with and offenders brought to justice.
When first introduced, CCTV was seen as a preventative tool, with little thought given to how the police would use any evidence produced. Unlike DNA and fingerprints no systems existed to manage the evidential product. Officers used CCTV as they saw fit, with little supervision, no training and no management processes. So whilst Police carefully controlled identifications made from traditional forensics, images were left to individual officers. Furthermore whilst suspects identified by DNA and fingerprints could easily be linked to other offences, officers using CCTV could be blissfully unaware that images or footage of the same suspect committing a similar offence even existed especially if in a different police area.
The critical moment for the Metropolitan Police and 3rd Forensic came in August 2011 with the London riots. The Met were faced with 4000 images of unidentified suspects and needed to manage them effectively. FILM was loaded onto the Met computer system. Operation Withern had a high identification and detection rate, 75 per cent of the images were identified and out of those 90 per cent were convicted at court proving a huge success. Building on this the Met and 3rd Forensic signed a partnership agreement to further develop the software. Hence FILM has been designed by and for operational officers with the assistance of 3rd Forensic computer staff. FILM has now grown to hold in excess of 50,000 images from CCTV, mobile phones and other sources together with mugshots of known offenders. Staff time is saved too. Pre-FILM it took days of cutting and pasting to create an edition of “Caught on Camera”, the Met’s journal of unidentified suspects. Now the process is automated and takes seconds. This means that officers and informants, with special knowledge of crime types and geographical areas can be shown bespoke versions of caught on camera in a matter of minutes. These images are also shared each week with many CCTV operators based in Local Authority Control Rooms, shopping centres and other commercial premises, meaning that the private security workforce can act as additional eyes for the police and send in identifications.
A further lesson from the riots was a use of dedicated officers to proactively show images to front line staff. Using the FILM database these officers known as the Area Identification Team have trebled identifications from 50 to 150 per week. Whilst some see automated facial recognition as the silver bullet, FILM with good officers produces far more results. The conversion of these idents to charged suspects is managed at the weekly “Crimefighters” meeting in the same way as traditional forensic idents, further driving up performance.
Another major step-forward has been the use of “super recognisers” officers to link crimes. Working with Dr Josh Davis of Greenwich University and using EU funding from “Project LASIE”, the Met has found over 140 officers, who have fantastic memory and recall for faces. Initially, these officers were used to simply identify offenders to individual offences – so one CCTV image of crime would result in one conviction. This all changed when six super recognisers were taken from their day jobs and based them full time at Scotland Yard making; The Proactive Super Recogniser Unit. The officers immediately started to exploit the FILM system to its full potential. Two tactics were quickly developed:
“Face Snap” – the super recognisers match images of a known prolific offender to numerous other crimes captured on CCTV and held on FILM – critically in a searchable format (so images can be searched by date – important for prison releases, geographical area, crime type and modus operandi, clothing and personal descriptors and several other factors).
“Domino” – Very useful for offences with multiple offenders or gang violence – where one offender’s details are known – the super recognisers establish details of their associates on police intelligence systems and them match the “mugshots” of these other offenders to those involved in the offence.
The concept of super recognisers is not solely a police skill. Research by the University of Greenwich has established that 1 per cent of the entire population may have this unique ability to recall and identify faces. Indeed testing with a South London Council Control Room found at least two super recognisers amongst the operators. This tactic could be further developed in the security industry, but super recognisers are little use without a database such as FILM.
In a major step forward, the City of London Police, a separate force to the Met, decided to join the “FILM family”. For the first time, images were shared between the two forces resulting in an identification by a City officer. Using the FILM database, the Met were able to link Murray to 11 counts of burglary and theft offences dating from December 2013 to February 1015. Murray was arrested and on 28th September 2015 appeared before Blackfriars Crown Court where she was sentenced to 30 months imprisonment. CCTV was the critical factor in sending her to jail.
Another of FILM’s success can be seen with prolific burglar, Thomas Ward. This thief was targeting public houses – not just the business area, but also the residential section. Using FILM the Super Recogniser Unit was able to link him to over twenty break-ins across London. Indeed, he was matched to offences in fourteen boroughs – from east to west and north to south London. In the past, images of such offenders would be very unlikely to be linked together, allowing prolific offenders to escape justice. This was not the case for Ward – he is now serving four years at Her Majesty’s pleasure.
As an example of the Met’s view on their Super Recognisers, on 8th February, Sir Bernard Hogan-Howe, the Commissioner at Scotland Yard named Detention Officer Idris Bada as the winner of his top “Excellence Award” at Intercontinental Hotel in Park Lane, London. Super recogniser Idris had made nearly 300 identifications (in addition to his day job) making him a major contributor to the success of CCTV. BUT Idris would be unable to do his fantastic work without the FILM database. He is regularly visited by the Met’s Area Identification Team, who use FILM to produce a bespoke package of unidentified images to show him. FILM allows the team to focus in on Idris’s knowledge – central London thieves, burglars and fraudsters.
To further “revolutionise” the use of CCTV and other images, 3rd Forensic working in partnership with the Met Police are keen to have FILM linked to surrounding forces and Home Counties – many burglars, thieves and robbers completely disregard force boundaries, 40 per cent of burglars arrested in Surrey actually reside in the MPS district making the sharing of images even more vital. In addition to the human recognition, plans are being made to add automated recognition- both facial and pattern. At present automated facial recognition only works with the highest quality face on images. This will no doubt improve, but even if there was a vast advancement in the effectiveness of such software it would be little use to any law enforcement agency if all their images were locked in an officer’s drawer. FILM ensures that images are available to the whole organisation. The security industry can assist in the drive to increase the number of automated identifications by placing some cameras to catch front on face images. Logo or pattern recognition is more mature technology and could be quickly used on FILM to find particular logos or patterns including tattoos on suspects enabling quick linking of crimes. This will be piloted in 2016.
At a time of police budget cuts these tactics can deliver much more for less using the very CCTV cameras which have already been professionally installed as per the IHS study. Whilst the number of CCTV idents is comparable to fingerprints and DNA – about 5000 per year. And the identification rate is similar at 45 per cent the most significant fact is that CCTV identification costs the police a 10th of the cost of the other forensic idents. The reasons are simple – fingerprints and DNA require hugely expensive experts, scientists and laboratories. On the other hand CCTV is supplied free to the police and officers are making identifications whilst on duty.
FILM can really make a difference and help your local police, or indeed, any law enforcement agency, make much better use of CCTV and images from other media. It is a simple, but effective system, which has a proven record in helping to solve thousands of crimes from its inception in 2011. Around the world there are millions of CCTV cameras, police forces already have super recognisers (they just have to find them) and they already have performance systems to manage forensic idents – with FILM joining these together, criminals will really have something to fear. CCTV installers, owners and operators in the security industry can be assured that Scotland Yard will be using their cameras to combat crime and ultimately prevent further offending – thereby getting CCTV to fulfil its original purpose – to prevent crime.
For more information contact – Gemma Havard at [email protected].
