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New technology has revolutionised the way staff at Leicestershire Constabulary carry out identification parades and is saving the Force thousands of pounds. The new system has just been installed in Loughborough's newly refurbished custody suite ensuring that the whole Force is now using the latest technology.
Before the introduction of video identification, staff from the Force's Identification Unit used a database of 3000 people to choose volunteers who were similar in description to the suspect. If there weren't enough people to choose from, an Authorised Identification Officer would go onto the streets of Leicester to find more people to take part. That officer had to find 15 volunteers for each parade, who were the same gender and colour and were similar in height, age and general appearance i.e. build, hair colour or facial hair. The suspect or his/her Solicitor would then choose 8 of those 15 people to take part in the formal ID parade/ line up and they would each be paid £15. Inspector Geoff Hughes, the Manager of the Force's, Identification Unit said; "Before video identification, it took a great deal of time and money to put a parade together, on average a parade would take approximately 2 hours at a cost of up to £1,500 for each parade and, as a result, the unit was only able to arrange about 15 procedures a week. This would impact on the time scales offered to officers of up to eight weeks, which would delay the investigation and considerable reducing the witness's chances of remembering the offender again because their memory had faded. The whole process was very laborious and time consuming to say the least." Now, new technology has revolutionised the whole process. Officers are now able to use Video Capture Facilities at all four custody suites in Leicestershire to photograph the suspect. They can instantly send the image, via secure computer link, to the Identification Unit at Euston Street. Staff can then draw on a database of 34,000 images and pull together the correct number of similar looking people very quickly. The Department is now able to do eight witnesses showings each day and the cost of the whole procedure is the price of the CD which the images are burnt onto. Inspector Hughes added; "The benefits to the Force are multiple. Not only does it now cost next to nothing to organise, we can do far more in one day and the time from the offence taking place to the witness showing has been significantly reduced and can be achieved on the same day. The number of positive identifications has also gone up from an average of 34% to an impressive 60% because people's memories are so much fresher. "Being able to put the facilities in at Loughborough has been the final piece in the jigsaw so now all four custody suites have video capture facilities and more and more staff are being trained up to use them." |
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