Skills in detecting gun carrying from CCTV.pdf (536.26 kB)
Skills in detecting gun carrying from CCTV
conference contribution
posted on 2010-02-04, 14:56 authored by Anastassia Blechko, Iain T. Darker, Alastair GaleGun 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.
History
School
- Science
Department
- Computer Science
Citation
BLECHKO, A., DARKER, I.T. and GALE A.G., 2008. Skills in detecting gun carrying from CCTV. IN: 42nd Annual IEEE International Carnahan Conference on Security Technology, 13-16 October, pp. 265-271.Publisher
© IEEEVersion
- VoR (Version of Record)
Publication date
2008Notes
This is a conference paper. [©2008 IEEE]. Personal use of this material is permitted. However, permission to reprint/republish this material for advertising or promotional purposes or for creating new collective works for resale or redistribution to servers or lists, or to reuse any copyrighted component of this work in other works must be obtained from the IEEE. This paper is also available from: http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/Xplore/dynhome.jspISBN
9781424418169Language
- en