CLPEX Chat Board

I conducted a similar eye witness exercise at a bank where I worked as security when I was a sworn officer back in about 1985. I was good friends with all the employees. Of course, as a cop I had short hair. I also wore plastic horn rimmed glasses back then.

One morning when the bank opened, I was parked out front in a borrowed car. I was wearing contact lenses and a long wig, plus I had on really grungy clothes, including a badly tattered, oversized Army fatigue jacket. And I had taped a small pebble to one foot inside my shoe to alter my gait. Just before I walked into the bank at straight up nine o'clock, I gargled a big mouthful of straight whisky.

Then I walked into the bank, went up to one of the senior tellers, and made a big deal out of removing about $100 worth of quarters from the big pockets of the fatigue jacket. I tried to talk in a slight accent of some kind. I asked for large bills in return. After making a scene for about ten minutes as the only customer in the lobby, I took my bills and left.

Five minutes after I left, I phoned the head teller and identified myself as Pat in my normal voice. She immediately recognized my voice and me on the phone. I told her a car wash had just been robbed at gun point as the owner was emptying the bill changer, and to be on the lookout for somebody with a lot of quarters. Of course, all the tellers went crazy. So she had each of them write down the best description they could remember. Needless to say, the resulting descriptions were all over the board and not one mentioned the "robber" looking like me, although I was on a first name basis with every single one of the employees in the lobby when I pulled the stunt.

Eyewitness identification? Not too reliable.
Fingerprint identification? Very reliable.

I think about the phrase "trained observer" that's often thrown around, especially references to officers being trained observers - statements like "even officers, who are trained observers, can't" and similar. I've been commissioned since 1978. I must have stepped out for a beer during the "observer training." Certainly officers are trained to be aware. I think every officer has had the experiences of driving with a spouse, off-duty, and either being asked what you're looking for glancing down alleys, or being asked how you noticed something they missed. But that's little more than being conditioned to look and notice. I think most officers have thought about what makes faces recognizable and have tried to train themselves to note those discriminators. Structured training exists but isn't commonly used. Largely, the "trained observer" exists only in work where there is a specific demand for critical perception and recall - like latent print examination.

Add to that the repeated frustration that comes from interviewing countless "eye witnesses" for a report when investigating a crime scene. Most officers are acutely aware of observational deficiencies and don't want to be accused of the same weakness.

We do somewhat the same thing with latent prints, except that we don't have a time restriction to deal with during the observation.

Michele

If we can revive this thread, I would revisit your one question which seems to have remained unanswered and that is the one of the blind testing of the conclusion being different to the "original" finding.

Would it not be possible for the person who sent out the unverified opinion to another verifier - preferably on another double-blind verification.

I realise that the real-life logistics behind this might be involved.

All this would obviously senseless if there is no detailed documentation of the verification received back from the first verifier, albeit positive or negative.

In general I would feel that there can only be an error if there was a test/verification of a specific conclusion, in which case double blind (or even single blind) testing would be practically impossible.

I will not even consider the practical considerations of trying to implement such a system because I can see how it can be a rather daunting task.

Anton,

I’d love to revisit this because I’m still looking for suggestions on how this should be handled.

I’m sure there are agencies that promote BV as a QA measure. I’m just wondering what their policy is for when the conclusion doesn’t match the original verifier?
Is it just assumed that if the conclusions aren’t the same then the conclusion hasn’t been blindly verified and therefore any differing conclusion shouldn’t be considered to be an ID?
Should differing conclusions go through conflict resolution?
As you stated, one option could be to send it to a double blind verifier, but the same question comes into play; what should happen if the conclusion didn’t match the original examiner? And what would make this additional step different from verification shopping (looking for verifiers until you found someone to agree with you)?

I don’t see BV or DBV as hard to implement (unless you don’t know of anyone to send these to) but there are some things that have to be considered. If an agency only verifies ID’s, then you already know the conclusion was an ID if you’re asked to do a Blind Verification. I would think that BV is impossible for agencies that only verify ID’s.

For people who do implement BV, what do they ask the verifier for? Do they just say will you blindly verify this? Or is there an independent person who administers the process to insure the person requesting the BV isn’t adding subliminal messages (will you blindly verify this ID for me?)?

I’m just curious on how different agencies handle this. If people are uncomfortable putting their policies on the chat board, you can email me at michele.triplett@kingcounty.gov.

Hi Michele

I would say it would be best to implement DBV ab initio. Slap the possible ID in an envelope with, say maybe at least 2 or 3 control records per possible ID.

In smaller agencies (10 or less) I can imagine that maintaining objective DBV could be difficult.

I would suggest that a conflict resolution of sorts also be implemented immediately when the first verification is in the negative but this leads me to another question:

Say the original "conclusion" was wrong?

The Verifier should obviously then give a negative opinion. If this negative verification is then taken to a conflict resolution and the latter confirms the first Verifiers opinion of negative, then chances are there is no ID.

The next question is about the number of conflict resolutions we will allow before we accept that the original possible ID is negative.

Should we take this to a neighbouring agency or keep it internal?

I would imagine that the greater percentage of verifications should be in the affirmative (unless we are working with a fresh trainee or a particularly hideous latent) and, therefore, the conflict resolutions should be rather few.

Let me know where I missed the bus

Anton,

I don’t think you’ve missed the bus. I agree that these questions need to be resolved PRIOR to doing verification, BV, or DBV.

If agencies use these procedures and then develop protocols according to how the conclusions end up…….well this doesn’t seem to be instill confidence in the procedures.

I’m not from an accredited lab but I’d think that the accrediting organizations would be worried about agencies that use any procedure without using them appropriately. From what I’ve seen, they don’t seem to be all that concerned. If I’m right about this then what’s the point in being accredited?