The police in North Rhine-Westphalia wants to develop a program for super-recognizers and is looking specifically in the six cities of Dortmund, Essen, Bochum, Düsseldorf, Cologne and Siegen-Wittgenstein among the officers working there for this type of people. When it comes to surveillance, the focus is not on high-tech, as is usually the case with robot dogs, but on unique skills.
Super-recognizers are people who can remember movement patterns, faces and other characteristics to a special degree. They are supposed to be able to accurately recognize people from a crowd of several thousand people, even if their faces are covered. They are also said to achieve better results than recognition software. The super-recognizers are then to be used in investigations to convict perpetrators. Super-recognizers are supposed to close the gaps that facial recognition software still leaves open. Many programs can't cope if the person they're looking for has a beard or wears a hood. For super-recognizers, this should not be a problem, even if the cases are years old and the person is nicely aged.
If Herbert Reul has his way, there are almost 1000 super-recognizers on duty with the NRW police. They just have to be "found". In the end, every police officer who is being transferred can claim to be a super-recognizer and thus "convict" the perpetrators. More and more limits are being taken away from the arbitrariness of the authorities.
