Facial recognition used to ID suspects

Grampian Police is hoping to save officers time by using facial recognition technology to help identify suspects.

The first trial of the system is due to go live in the next six weeks using software from supplier Steria.

Suspects brought into Grampian's custody suite will have their photograph taken and compared with images in the force's subset of the Scottish Criminal Records Office database.

The system will help save officers time, says Carl Ashcroft, chief inspector and head of IT for Grampian Police.

'The primary use for us is in the custody environment where we have two common problems: people being too drunk to tell us who they are, or being obstructive and giving us false details,' he said.

Using the technology in the custody suite is just the first stage, says Ashcroft.

The force is working with the local council to upgrade CCTV cameras to digital technology and the facial recognition software can then be used to scan the images.

'If, for example, there was a missing child we can use the recognition technology with CCTV to pick them out more quickly - either in the live environment or by scanning the records,' said Ashcroft.

'In major enquiries officers spend literally thousands of hours going through CCTV footage and if we can even half that it will be a major time saving for us,' he said.

The Police IT Organisation (Pito) also announced plans last week for a national database of photographs, which could be the precursor for a nationwide facial recognition capability.

The photograph taken when a person is arrested is held locally in any number of formats including filed hard copies. The Facial Images National Database (Find) project being considered by Pito would collect all the photographs in a single searchable location.

'With the Police National Computer you can search criminal records nationally but there is no way of searching photographs. The plan is to look at the rationale to find out what the business need is before committing to anything,' said a Pito spokesman.