Super brains in action against criminals

These eyes. When Jewgenia Minina meets people, a quick, concentrated look is enough for the other person's face to become anchored in her brain. Bad luck for the person if they commit a crime: The senior detective from Friedrichshafen can filter out this person from among hundreds of other people, even years later – even if they are in a completely different place, have aged considerably and have a completely different hairstyle, for example.

Yevgenia Minina is a super recognizer (SR). The 29-year-old's talent was discovered in 2021: At that time, 956 officers at the Ravensburg police headquarters voluntarily took the test. 21 successfully completed the four-part test. “Super recognizers are people who are particularly good at deducing the identity of faces.” “This means that they can compare images of unknown people extremely efficiently and also recognize people they may have only met briefly in an unexpected context,” explains neuroscientist Professor Meike Ramon, a global specialist in SR who has been working with her own team in the “Applied Face Cognition Lab” research laboratory she founded since March 2019.

Rare talent

Science cannot yet answer the question of where the rare SR talent comes from and why only a few people have it. “There are no studies on the inheritance of SR abilities,” says Meike Ramon. “However, twin studies and studies on congenital prosopagnosia suggest that a large part of the ability variance can be explained genetically.”

In 2009, the SR talent was the focus of a scientific study for the first time: The American perception psychologist Richard Russell, together with two other researchers, had studied prosopagnosia, so-called face blindness, and discovered that there are not only people with a far below-average ability to recognize faces, but also with the opposite, namely the SR talent, which includes the Friedrichshafen chief detective. “I had already noticed before the test that I can remember faces well,” says Yevgenia Minina. But she had not been aware until then that she was an SR.

But how does the brain of an SR differ from another who does not have this talent? How do SRs “scan” a face? In 2017, a study found that SRs process information from faces differently than control subjects: According to the study, SRs fixate more intensely on the center of faces, while control subjects focus more on the eyes, while face-blind people focus more on the mouth region. Scientists conclude that SRs absorb information more efficiently than a “normal” viewer due to the number of fixations and their distribution.

Properties that the English police were the first to make use of. When a series of violent riots involving arson attacks, looting and vandalism broke out in London in August 2011, 200,000 hours of video material had to be viewed in order to track down the perpetrators. Automatic facial recognition is no longer halving the rate. The police also relied on an officer with a special talent. The constable is said to have identified 180 people – despite the blurring in the footage.

Special unit at the Metropolitan Police London

In 2013, the Metropolitan Police of London, formerly Scotland Yard, set up a special SR unit. A year later, it provided the crucial clue to the man who had murdered a 14-year-old girl: in images from surveillance cameras, the unit's employees had seen the girl in the company of a barely recognizable man. The SR recognized this man more widely when he bought beer in a shop and was then identified. The London special unit is currently said to have 150 employees.

In Germany, SR from England was used for the first time following New Year's Eve 2015/2016 in Cologne, when young men in particular, many of them with a migrant background, committed sexual crimes against hundreds of women. The British investigators are supporting their German colleagues in the search for the perpetrators. “The New Year task force used SR to evaluate 272 gigabytes of data, consisting of 313 videos and images,” it was said at the time. The experts first memorized the faces of the women who had filed a report. Then they searched the videos. They followed the path of the women they recognized until a suspicious person approached them. The specialists compared the images of this person with wanted photos.

Since the “Stuttgart Riot Night” in the southwest

SRs were also deployed after the terrorist attack on the Christmas market near Berlin's Memorial Church in December 2016, in which 13 people were murdered. They spend hours watching videos from surveillance cameras – a task that, according to scientist Ramon, they “can handle much more efficiently” than other officers.

The Stuttgart Police Headquarters has been cooperating with the University of Greenwich in London, a leader in this field, since March 2018. The “Stuttgart Riot Night” from June 20 to 21, 2020, was the deciding factor in increasing the use of SR. For six months, the Stuttgart Super Recognizers searched through thousands of images, including blurry ones, of violent criminals and rioters.

According to a spokeswoman for the Stuttgart Police Department, “the research results to date show that this innate talent, with varying degrees of intensity, is essentially divided into four abilities: short-term memory for faces, long-term memory for faces, face comparison, i.e. simultaneous face comparison, and recognition from a crowd, i.e. recognizing faces in a crowd.”

Also used at the Football World Cup

In addition, SRs have been used at events such as the 2024 European Football Championship “in order to be able to identify dangerous dangers that can be posed by certain people, as well as to identify certain people in cases where crimes have already been committed.” Possible connections between crimes can also be established in this way. “The information on perpetrators and investigations obtained in this way ensures that further crimes are prevented in addition to the subsequent investigation of the crime,” the spokeswoman concludes.

Since 2021, students at the Baden-Württemberg Police Academy have been able to voluntarily be tested for SR skills. There are no current figures on the SRs deployed by the Baden-Württemberg police – in November 2022 there were more than 400 SRs, distributed across all 13 police headquarters. Bavaria and other federal states are also increasingly relying on SRs.

However, “it must always be emphasized that recognition is purely subjective, i.e. the police officers are not photo experts or assessors,” stressed the spokeswoman for the Stuttgart police headquarters. Oliver Weißflog, spokesman for the Ravensburg police headquarters, added: “Our findings are not proof in court. But they can be important evidence.”

The Stuttgart spokeswoman cannot provide any quotes or exact figures on the success or recognition rate of the police SR for tactical reasons. However, she is happy to cite the “prime example of the use of the SR”, the “Eckensee” investigation team, which was set up on the occasion of the night of the Stuttgart riots. “Of the total of 150 suspects identified, 63 were recognized or identified by the SR,” reports the spokeswoman.

There is also criticism. “The police have grown fond of their super recognizers and unfortunately use them not only for searches at large events such as concerts, football matches and demonstrations, but also as suspicious evidence when a chain of evidence has to be closed in cases with considerable investigative pressure,” says Heidelberg lawyer Jörg Becker. He emphasizes “the lack of validity of this pseudo-evidence.” The defense must be held against this – for example by critically questioning the super recognizers and submitting counter-evidence applications.

Uwe Stürmer, President of the Ravensburg Police Department, does not contest this. “The special capabilities of SR are extremely interesting for effective criminal prosecution because – in addition to a number of other investigative approaches – they can make a very concrete contribution to identifying the perpetrators of the crimes in question.” At the Ravensburg Police Department, colleagues who have this ability are also deployed in criminal proceedings. This is particularly the case when electronic facial recognition programs reach their limits.” SR is sometimes more effective than facial recognition programs. “The faster we identify suspects, the more likely it is that we will find further traces of the crimes in question.”

Does Uwe Stürmer expect that the work of the SR will become less important in the face of AI, ChatGPT, automation and digitalization? Or, on the contrary, will it become more important? “To some extent, this ultimately depends on the quality, performance and further technical progress of the corresponding software programs.” “It is difficult to make a reliable forecast on this,” says the Ravensburg police chief. “We will probably achieve the best results if we use our SR in combination with computer-assisted facial recognition.” In any case, I would not want to rely on the computer alone.”