Beware! You can be caught just by your walking gait!
Aiming to catch criminals red-footed
By Stewart Tendler and Lucy Bannerman
A computer system can spot those who are guilty by the way they walk, report our correspondents
THEY may be able to wear disguises, dodge CCTV and even keep their DNA under control, but one thing will always identify criminals — their walk.
Far from relying on fingerprints or photofit, scientists now believe that an individual's gait can give the game away.
Police have databanks of palm prints, ear prints and handwriting at their disposal, as well facial recognition systems that can match fugitive faces with those in a crowd. But the next step could be swagger surveillance.
For more than ten years, scientists have been working on a computer system that can analyse the movements of criminals caught on CCTV and compare them with those of a suspect. The system works on the premise that every individual has a signature walking style.
The technique is still in its infancy but has been employed in high-profile cases. Swedish police successfully used it three years ago to identify a robber involved in a bank raid in which a customer was killed. Officers investigating the murder of Anna Lindh, the Swedish Foreign Minister, in 2003 asked experts to examine the walk of their suspect, Mijailo Mijailovic. Their efforts were not needed — Mijailovic confessed — but the case highlighted the technique's potential.
In Britain scientists backed by the MoD and a £500,000 research grant are working on "automatic gait recognition", which will allow police and courts to compare images captured on CCTV with the walk of a suspect.
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