When the police in Frankfurt are looking for a suspect, they have recently started using very special officers: super recognizers.

They have the ability to memorize faces and rediscover them in large crowds.

Often more meticulous than facial recognition software can.

A year ago, the Frankfurt police headquarters began to look for officers with this talent in their own ranks - and struck gold.

Catherine Iskandar

Responsible editor for the "Rhein-Main" department of the Sunday newspaper.

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44 of these Super Recognizers were selected from a pool of around a thousand applicants in a complex test procedure.

They managed to recognize people they had only seen briefly before, some of them dressed up, masked or made up.

The selection was made in cooperation with Greenwich University.

Some of the officials were deployed in the Dannenröder forest, for example.

At that time, the authority said, it was possible to identify demonstrators "who had tried to disguise their identity, for example by painting their faces."

The officers were also deployed in the course of searches: for example after a homicide in Frankfurt Central Station at the end of October 2021. A comparison of the images from the security camera brought the decisive hit, which led to the arrest of the alleged perpetrator.

400 successful cases

Now the authority, together with Interior Minister Peter Beuth (CDU), is taking stock for the first time.

“This talent is outstanding and of particular importance for police work.

This is also confirmed by the successes achieved so far,” says Beuth.

According to Carina Lerch, who is leading the pilot project, super recognizers at the Frankfurt police headquarters have been able to recognize people in more than 400 cases since May 2021.

The project will be further expanded.

Officials with this special talent are to be employed in all Hessian police headquarters in the future.

The Frankfurt police chief Gerhard Bereswill came across the possibilities of Super Recognisers a few years ago at a police conference.

Even then it was clear to him that this could also be a successful project for Frankfurt.

But he would not have thought that the possible uses were so diverse.

He sees advantages above all in the evaluation of images received via the municipal video surveillance systems.

"There's a lot of potential there."

Other federal states such as Bavaria or Baden-Württemberg have been using the capabilities of super recognizers for some time.

With great success.

For example, officials with their special skills supported the investigations in connection with the Stuttgart riot in June 2020.

70 suspects were identified in this way.

The fact that this ability for detailed face recognition even exists was discovered more or less by accident.

Two percent of the population should have this talent.

In the meantime, Greenwich University in England has set up an extensive research program which, above all, also includes complex test procedures.

If you want to know whether you have these skills yourself, you can take a rough test on the university's website.

Maybe this gift can also be used when you're not looking for criminals.