After the night of the Stuttgart riot last summer, around one in two of the 140 suspects so far has been recognized by so-called super-recognizers of the police.
The investigators have the special ability not to forget faces or to recognize people in photos and videos, no matter how blurry.
You can not only identify the faces of suspects in pictures, but also filter them out of the crowds.
“In order to be able to adequately appreciate their performance, one also has to be aware of the quality of the underlying recordings - they are taken in dynamic situations, often blurred, in the dark, and faces can only be seen briefly and partially,” said the Baden-Württemberg resident Interior Minister Thomas Strobl (CDU) in the spring.
In June 2020, a mob had moved through downtown Stuttgart.
The people involved smashed shop windows, looted shops and attacked police officers.
Two percent of the population
It was more by chance that science found out a few years ago that there are people with this talent.
Two percent of the population are said to have this ability.
This can be useful in the fight against crime: Police officers often work with shaky mug shots and dark images from surveillance cameras that only show contours.
Around 50 Super Recognizers work at the Stuttgart Police Headquarters alone.
Officials with this talent are to be deployed nationwide at all police headquarters in the country in the future.
"This potential will help us to identify more criminals and thus bring them to justice," said Strobl (CDU).
As part of a voluntary test procedure at the University of Police Baden-Württemberg, every police student can now be tested for talent. In total, several hundred students have already taken the test. The London police set up a unit years ago, and the police in Hesse and Bavaria also use the recognizers.