News
Jamaica Police Take Up Promat
Press release from Radio Jamaica
JCF
launches Video ID parades Monday, 26 January 2009
The Jamaica Constabulary Force on Monday afternoon launched a new Video Identification system designed to speed up the holding of identification parades and protect witnesses.
Head of the MIT, ACP Les Green said the new system, should improve the effectiveness and fairness of identification parades.
"It doesn't alter the basic principles for holding an identification parade, what it does is utilize technology and instead of having to organize a conventional line-up where we have to find the possible participants, what we have is those participants stored in a database so it's fairer for the suspect and its fairer for the witness and it should also speed up the process tremendously,"
"So instead of having to find persons of a similar appearance to a suspect whenever we find a suspect they should already be in the database and there would be some similarities that we can select and have an electronic parade," said ACP Green.
In a conventional identification parade, witnesses are asked to pick a suspect from a line of individuals.
But under the new system the police will record images of the suspects as well as images of other people who look the same as the suspect.
The witness then picks from that line-up of images on a computer.
According to the police, conventional identification parades have been tough, because they have trouble finding people to take part in the line ups.
They say witnesses are also exposed when they go to police stations to identify suspects.
The police say by using lap top computers they can go to witnesses instead of having them come to the stations.
Two stations, the Kingston Central and Linstead Police Stations have been equipped with the new system.
Four other stations are being set up ready to go live in March 2009.
Chris and Judith Whitwam from Promat UK came over to set up and train 12 police officers in the use of the system, seen below being presented with a plaque for their contribution to the Project.
The Promat room at Police HQ in Kingston
