West Yorkshire Police is using a system based on Blackberry handheld computers to help officers identify suspects when they are out on the beat.

The force is using the devices to stop criminals from giving false identities when they are stopped in the street, by displaying a photo when names are entered into the system.

'If a person is stopped in the street, police have a legal right to ask him to account for their actions, which is known as a stop,' said Paul Friday, head of information services at West Yorkshire Police.

'If we stop someone and they give us false details, the record will bring up the wrong picture of the individual.

'The old system would have used a radio check, and the individual being questioned could lie and get away with it,' Friday said.

. The system can also warn police to be on the look out for a particular individual and provide embedded links to the StreetWyse record, allowing officers to be encountering the suspect knows whether they are likely to be dangerous or not.

Some 2,300 devices have been issued to frontline officers, and the force has the biggest installation of handhelds in the country.

'They were rolled out to our officers in the summer of last year, and we have been using them to give access to the police national computer, our own intelligence systems, and a range of other information,' said Friday.