School of Human Sciences
Face and Voice Recognition Lab
Institute of Lifecourse Development
University of Greenwich
London
super-recognisers@Greenwich.ac.uk
Twitter: @GRecognisers
Two articles on super-recognisers have been published this week in Baden-Württemberg.
The Deputy Prime Minister and Interior Minister of Baden-Württemberg state, Germany, Thomas Strobl, issued a statement this week describing how our team at the University of Greenwich successfully started working with Stuttgart Police to identify over 10 super-recognisers in their workforce in 2018/2019. The next stage of this project started in February 2021 with the testing of all volunteer recruits.
The media also described how rioting in June 2020 in Stuttgart resulted in months of investigations in which super-recognisers were called in to assist in identifying rioters. The 10 Stuttgart super-recognisers selected to work on this operation have so far helped identify 130 suspects, while 79 arrest warrants have been issued and 26 suspects are now held in custody. The identification will have led police investigatory teams to locate additional evidence in the case.
Judges have so far imposed a total of 40 years of imprisonment partly based on these identifications.
See here for the full story: https://www.stimme.de/suedwesten/nachrichten/pl/nach-krawallnacht-sucht-polizei-randalierer-mit-fahndungsfotos;art19070,4457606
English version (PDF) for download here:
A second article describes how police recruits at the Hochschule für Polizei Baden-Württemberg are having their abilities tested to see if any are super-recognisers. Early days – but watch this space. https://www.stimme.de/deutschland-welt/politik/dw/taetererkennung-polizei-setzt-auf-super-recogniser;art295,4460056
English version (PDF) for download here:
Please see here for a previous success story of off-duty Stuttgart super-recognisers spontaneously identifying fugitives: https://www.superrecognisers.com/post/uni-of-greenwich-tested-off-duty-stuttgart-police-super-recognisers-spontaneously-identify-fugitives
Please see here for the official Baden-Württemberg press release and a quote from the Deputy Prime Minister and Interior Minister below: https://www.baden-wuerttemberg.de/de/service/presse/pressemitteilung/pid/polizei-etabliert-super-recogniser-1/
English version (PDF) for download here:
“The investigations into the night of the Stuttgart riot in June 2020 have very special challenges... 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."
- Deputy Prime Minister and Interior Minister Thomas Strobl.
Davis (2019) provides a brief description of the University of Greenwich four-type three-phase testing procedures used for policing.
Davis, J. P. (2019). The worldwide impact of identifying super-recognisers in police and business. The Cognitive Psychology Bulletin; Journal of the British Psychological Society: Cognitive Section, 4, 17-22. ISSN: 2397-2653. https://shop.bps.org.uk/the-cognitive-psychology-bulletin-issue-4-spring-2019
(Pre-print: https://doi.org/10.31234/osf.io/2ybau)
