BENGALURU: The city police will soon rely on a tech tool, and not just fingerprints, to ascertain if a suspected person is a criminal.
Using a facial recognition application, photographs, sketches and images from CCTV footages will be matched with the photographs of the criminals that are already updated in the police’s criminal database.
This will ensure better co-ordination between police stations, and allow policemen to sift through criminals on their database to find a suspect.
The automated facial recognition software will be first used in the South East police station. According to Rohini Katoch, DCP (South East), “Fingerprint matching requires time. This has to be matched through the database.”
Santhosh Kumar, CEO of city-based Techpod Technologies, which has tied up with software firm US-based FaceFirst, claims that matches can be found in about a minute.
Levels of Criminals
People in the police database are divided into various levels of hierarchy, Kumar said.
The red level includes high-profile criminals like Dawood Ibrahim and Ravi Poojari, who are wanted by FBI, CIA, and the Interpol. The second level has the most wanted criminals of the state. Level three has the rowdy sheeters and level four includes those involved in flesh trade and smuggling. The fifth level includes routine cases such as that of missing people.
At each level, a hit will automatically alert a set hierarchy of officials, from the inspectors to the Police Commissioner.
To begin with, the city police will install six CCTV cameras in its jurisdiction. A control room will be set up at the South East Division DCP’s office where the searches will be made, officials said. The pilot project is likely to be conducted for a month-and-a-half, following which the police will decide on extending it to the entire city, Kumar added.
Using the application will have significant implication in cases where a mob is involved. The police can search mobs for people who with a criminal history and take action, he said.
City Police Commissioner
M N Reddi said the application is used around the globe. “This effort is still in its initial stages. We can check if one is wanted in other police stations, and take action,” he added.
According to Rohini, the police’s criminal database has 36,000 fingerprints, of which about 8,000 are duplicate. The police do not have photographs of all the criminals and will require an updation as soon as the application is put in use.
How it works
■ Photos of the accused person in the database can be matched using photographs, sketches or images from CCTV cameras
■ If a person identified as wanted in the database passes through any of the CCTV cameras connected to the control room, an alert is immediately sent to the nearest police station
■ A person’s face is put into a grid, which identifies 13 points of uniqueness used to match the images