6 minute read
With an eye to identify
Editorial and photography: Jesse Wray-McCann
Despite revolutionary advancements in artificial intelligence and facial recognition technology, Victoria Police has two secret weapons when it comes to identifying potential suspects.
Protective Services Officer (PSO) Acting Sergeant Priyank Vakharia and Supervising Police Custody Officer (SPCO) Asif Shamim are famous across the organisation for their remarkable skills for putting names to faces.
Whenever police officers circulate photos or footage internally of a person of interest (POI) following a crime, PSO A/Sgt Vakharia and SPCO Shamim are often quick to nominate who they think it may be.
Based at Footscray, PSO A/Sgt Vakharia is both prodigious and accurate, having nominated 86 names in the past two years, with 84 of those being correct.
In one month alone, he accurately identified 11 POIs.
Lauded by his colleagues for his talent, the humble PSO A/Sgt Vakharia said he was simply happy to play his small part in the overall mission of Victoria Police.
“I just feel satisfied knowing that I have been out there proactively talking to and engaging with people, and by doing so, I have come across a lot of persons of interest and I've remembered their IDs,” PSO A/Sgt Vakharia said.
“The fact it has eventually helped some investigations to be completed is very satisfying.”
Inspired by his uncle who was a police officer in India, PSO A/Sgt Vakharia joined Victoria Police as a PSO eight years ago.
He was already aware of the need to be able to remember identifying features of POIs, having previously been the assistant manager of a service station, where he had to report many petrol drive-offs and armed robberies to police. Rather than having a photographic memory or effortless natural gift for recognising people, PSO A/Sgt Vakharia has developed his ability himself over the years through a systematic approach.
“When I started as a PSO at Transit Central, there were always a few people that we had to deal with every day,” he said.
“Some of them were recidivist drunk people who could not even remember their names and who would not have any ID on them.
“Always going through that process of trying to get a name or address out of someone was challenging.
“I started taking notes on people I engaged with and kept them in a folder so that I could go back to it later on.”
But with every time he referenced that folder, his reliance on it became less and less.
It was the use of his system that was in fact training his memory to be more effective by itself.
PSO A/Sgt Vakharia’s boss, Senior Sergeant Brooke Ayres, is among the growing crowd of colleagues who marvel at his skills as a PSO.
“The way he can remember people and faces is astonishing,” Sen Sgt Ayres said.
“There are 84 people who have been held accountable for their actions directly thanks to Priyank, and that’s huge.”
Where PSO A/Sgt Vakharia’s is a trained skill, for SPCO Shamim, remembering people is a purely natural talent.
And his numbers are staggering.
In the past seven years, the Mill Park Police Station SPCO has positively identified more than 1050 POIs.
His record for one month alone is 60.
Before joining Victoria Police to manage people in custody in police station cells, SPCO Shamim worked for two years at Port Phillip Prison and eight years at the Melbourne Custody Centre.
It was during these 10 years that he got to know hundreds of faces and names he would later remember at Victoria Police.
“Recently there were more than $100,000 of sunglasses stolen and when I saw the photos of the guy police were interested in,
I straightaway knew it was someone I had dealt with just once back in 2008,” SPCO Shamim said.
“When I told the police officer who it was in the photo, I said, ‘When you find him, you’ll also notice that he has a tattoo of his mother’s name in Arabic on his arm’.
“It’s a natural thing for me, maybe photographic memory, because when I see something once, it just sticks in my head.”
Sometimes the quality of CCTV footage available to Victoria Police is such that it only offers a side profile of a person that amounts to little more than a blurred collection of pixels.
But often that’s all SPCO Shamim needs.
“I remember police were looking for the ID of a woman wanted for alcohol theft in the city and the footage was so bad that you could not make out her face, but I could tell by the body structure it was a woman I had dealt with before, and it was,” he said.
“There was even one time I had given this guy a cup of coffee here in the cells at Mill Park and then weeks later I saw a photo of him after a theft where his face was completely covered but I was able to identify him because of a tiny mole on his arm.”
SPCO Shamim goes out of his way to not only be across POI photos and footage from police areas throughout the state, but he also proactively keeps up to date with police custody attendance records to remember their faces for the future.
“It’s such a good thing to be able to fit my skills and past experience into the organisation so well, and to help our police and detectives and ultimately the community,” he said.
His memory skills also extend beyond identifying crooks, not only helping him study a double degree in law and criminal justice while doing full-time shift work, but with the grocery shopping too.
“When my wife tells me what I need to get from the shops, she has said a couple of times, ‘Aren’t you going to write it all down?’ but I say, ‘No, I don’t need to write it. Just tell me what you need and it will be stuck in my head,’” he said.
So on-the-run criminals be warned, if PSO A/Sgt Vakharia or SPCO Shamim have ever seen your face, you’ll never be able to outrun their memories.
