Haven't I Seen You Somewhere?

This man never forgets a face. And that rare ability is helping police catch criminals.

- Tim Hulse

AUSTIN CABALLERO HAD BEEN GETTING AWAY WITH IT for years. A shoplifter who targeted small, high-end shops in London’s wealthier districts, he had helped himself to more than £100,000* worth of jewellery and designer clothing over an extended period.

“He was good,” says Detective Sergeant Eliot Porritt of the UK capital’s Metropolitan Police. “I hate using that word for him, but he was well dressed and calm. He would go in and engage the staff in conversation, and as soon as their backs were turned, he’d steal stuff. Sometimes it wasn’t until two or three days later that they’d realize something was missing from the display. Then they’d look on CCTV and call the police. But he’d be long gone by then, so he always had the advantage.”

Caballero would probably still be getting away with it were it not for individuals such as Porritt, who is one of a team of so-called ‘superrecognizers’ who have been operating at the Met’s headquarters at New Scotland Yard since May 2015 and who last year lent their help to the police in Cologne, Germany.

They sound like characters from a Marvel comic and indeed their talents are close to superhuman, because they have an uncanny ability to remember and recognize faces—even faces that are only partially revealed or highly pixelated.

So when a member of the unit saw a picture of the then unknown Caballero on the Met’s computer database of CCTV images of known suspects last summer, he decided to check and see if he had been caught on camera before. It’s a matching process the unit calls ‘face snapping’, after the game of snap, in which players look for identical cards.