Identification from CCTV: Assessing police super-recogniser ability to spot faces in a crowd and susceptibility to change blindness

Police worldwide regularly review CCTV evidence in investigations. This research found London police experts who work in a full-time ‘Super-Recogniser Unit’ and front line police identifiers regularly making suspect identifications from CCTV, possessed superior unfamiliar face recognition ability, and, with higher levels of confidence, outperformed controls at locating actors in a bespoke Spot the Face in a Crowd Test (SFCT). Police were also less susceptible to change blindness errors, and possessed higher levels of conscientiousness, and lower levels of neuroticism and openness. Controls who took part in SFCT actor familiarisation training outperformed untrained controls, suggesting this exercise might enhance identification of persons of interest in real investigations. This research supports an accumulating body of evidence demonstrating that international police forces may benefit from deploying officers with superior face recognition ability to roles such as CCTV review, as these officers may be the most likely to identify persons of interest.