Friday, August 19, 2016

"The team is called the super-recognizers, and each member has taken a battery of tests, administered by scientists, to establish this uncanny credentia"

NY:
Three times a week, the Met issues an online bulletin, “Caught on Camera,” featuring video stills of unidentified suspects committing crimes. Many officers ignore it, but Porritt found the activity of picking out faces quietly absorbing, like doing a crossword puzzle. He soon became known for his prowess at making identifications—“idents,” in the Scotland Yard vernacular—and last year he was asked to join the super-recognizers.

...

By some estimates, as many as a million CCTV cameras are installed in London, making it the most surveilled metropolis on the planet.

...

When a super-recognizer makes an ident, she must submit it for “peer review,” in which a second super-recognizer—usually Eliot Porritt—renders an independent judgment.