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Anastassia Blechko
Anastassia
Blechko
Iain T. Darker
Iain T.
Darker
Alastair Gale
Alastair
Gale
Skills in detecting gun carrying from CCTV
Loughborough University
2010
CCTV
Firearm
Emotion recognition
Non-verbal behaviour
Information and Computing Sciences not elsewhere classified
2010-02-04 14:56:42
Conference contribution
https://repository.lboro.ac.uk/articles/conference_contribution/Skills_in_detecting_gun_carrying_from_CCTV/9404333
Gun crime is an increasingly common occurrence
in the UK. An ongoing research programme is investigating
the ability of humans to detect whether or not an individual,
captured on CCTV, is carrying a firearm. In the present
study we argue that observers respond to cues which
individuals inherently produce whilst carrying a concealed
firearm. These cues might be reflected in the body language
of those carrying firearms and might be apprehended by
observers at a conscious or subconscious level. Simulated
CCTV footage was generated of individuals who acted as
surveillance targets and who carried, concealed on their
persons, either firearms or matched innocuous objects.
Trained CCTV operators and lay people then viewed this
footage and were asked to indicate whether or not they
thought the surveillance target was carrying a firearm. The
size of the influence of carrying a firearm on a surveillance
target’s anxiety level was found to be related to the number
of times that individual was deemed to be carrying a firearm.
However, the surveillance target’s anxiety level was not
related to sensitivity in firearm detection. Additionally, a test
of body language decoding ability did not show that the body
language reading skills of observers were related to ability to
detect a concealed firearm. These initial results provide some
insight into the potential for using a surveillance target’s body
language to determine if they are concealing a weapon and
whether or not such an ability can be acquired through
surveillance training and experience.