Hernando County Sheriff’s Office Solves a Case That Could’ve Gone Cold
BENEFITS
Investigate lead provided
in just seconds
Provided a person of interest that may not have been discovered
Prevented a case
from going cold
PROBLEM
A HOMICIDE CASE IN NEED OF INVESTIGATIVE LEADS
The Hernando County Sheriff’s Office (FL) was working on a homicide case. The victim’s body was found in an area with a large transient population, where few witnesses were available.
As part of its investigation, the detectives contacted the family of the victim. The family mentioned that the victim had recently met a new acquaintance, but they only knew him by his first name.
Fortunately, the family happened to have a picture on their camera showing the acquaintance’s face. While the facial image was not of high quality, the detectives snapped a picture of the photo on the camera in hopes it would reveal the acquaintance’s identity.
“This area where the homicide happened has a lot of homeless people who don’t know a lot about people out there.”
SOLUTION
QUICKLY IDENTIFYING A PERSON OF INTEREST
An automated facial recognition solution based upon artificial intelligence can speed up identification time dramatically. Facial recognition compares an uploaded probe image against a database of images. Law enforcement agencies can use facial recognition results as investigative leads, and when supported by other evidence, they can accurately and rapidly identify suspects, persons of interest, and victims of crimes.
The technology Clearview AI provides is a post-event research tool, using over 40 billion photos derived from publicly available web sources, including social media posts, personal and professional websites, news articles, online mugshots and other criminal databases, public record sites and thousands of other open source records. Clearview AI’s law enforcement customers can use the results from this tool as investigative leads, which require confirmation and follow-up investigation from trained investigators.
“To me it wasn’t a great photo. I was actually surprised that it hit, but then again we’ve gotten hits on worse photos.”
THE RESULTS
CLEARVIEW AI IDENTIFIES THE PERSON OF INTEREST, PROVIDING AN INVESTIGATIVE LEAD THAT RESULTS IN AN ARREST
Now having a photo of the acquaintance who was a possible person of interest, the detectives contacted the Manager of the Crime Analysis Unit and asked her if she could identify him using the photo obtained from the victim’s family. The photo’s low grade quality, a picture of a screen shot taken from a camera screen, did not deter investigators from obtaining a lead. The Crime Analysis Unit had access to two facial recognition solutions, one of which, at the time, was a trial version of Clearview AI they began using after hearing about it from another law enforcement agency.
After the Crime Analysis Unit Manager cropped the photo, she submitted it to Clearview AI. Despite the poor quality of the photo, the Manager obtained multiple results within a few seconds. These included numerous arrest photos from two counties away which stated the person’s full name and date of birth. The first name in the arrest records matched the first name by which the victim’s family knew the person of interest. The Manager performed additional research into the person’s criminal history and possible location information and turned the results over to the detectives.
The detectives added this person of interest to the list of people to interview. Before this time, the person of interest was completely unknown to the detectives.
“Without the investigative lead provided by Clearview AI, this case may have gone cold.”
After further investigation, the sheriff’s department uncovered additional evidence as well as probable cause and arrested the person of interest for the homicide.
Without the investigative lead provided by Clearview AI, it would’ve taken a lot longer for the acquaintance’s identity to be revealed and located for questioning. If more time had passed, he could have left the area, making it harder to find him and subsequently arrest him for the homicide.
