We might find social media images of a person at a birthday party wearing the same clothing as the suspect in a robbery. That person then becomes a lead; the facial identification team will provide only a single such lead to the case detective. Leads provided by the unit are comparable to tips to our Crime Stoppers hotline — no matter how compelling, they must be verified to establish probable cause for an arrest. No one can be arrested on the basis of the computer match alone.

In 2018, detectives made 7,024 requests to the Facial Identification Section, and in 1,851 cases possible matches were returned, leading to 998 arrests. Some investigations are still being conducted and some suspects have not been apprehended.

But in many cases there have been clear results. Recently, the work of the facial identification team led to the arrest of a man accused of raping a worker at a day spa, and another charged with pushing a subway passenger onto the tracks. We have made arrests in murders, robberies and the on-air assault of a TV reporter. A woman whose dismembered body was found in trash bags in two Bronx parks was identified. So was a woman hospitalized with Alzheimer’s, through an old arrest photo for driving without a license.