Video Identification Parade Electronic Recording (VIPER) is a digital system for conducting identity parades. Rather than recruit a group of volunteers who resemble a suspect, police officers can retrieve a selection of pre-recorded video recordings of people unrelated to the case under investigation. Police officers make up a virtual parade, using clips taken from this library, and witness is then shown these, along with recordings of the current suspect. The system is used by many police forces across the UK. VIPER was developed by

West Yorkshire Police West Yorkshire Police is the territorial police force responsible for policing the metropolitan county of West Yorkshire, England. It is the fourth largest territorial police force in England and Wales by number of officers. History West Yor ...

. The system is operated by the Viper Bureau from a

datacentre A data center (American English) or data centre (British English)See spelling differences. is a building, a dedicated space within a building, or a group of buildings used to house computer systems and associated components, such as telecommunic ...

Wakefield Wakefield is a cathedral city in West Yorkshire, England located on the River Calder. The city had a population of 99,251 in the 2011 census.https://www.nomisweb.co.uk/census/2011/ks101ew Census 2011 table KS101EW Usual resident population, ...

. The initiative is funded by the Home Office; the initial set up cost was £7.6m, and the Wakefield datacentre was officially inaugurated by

Home Secretary The secretary of state for the Home Department, otherwise known as the home secretary, is a senior minister of the Crown in the Government of the United Kingdom. The home secretary leads the Home Office, and is responsible for all national ...

David Blunkett David Blunkett, Baron Blunkett, (born 6 June 1947) is a British Labour Party politician who has been a Member of the House of Lords since 2015, and previously served as the Member of Parliament (MP) for Sheffield Brightside and Hillsborough ...

in March 2003. The system contains clips of over 50,000 different people, which can be downloaded to police laptops to allow identification to be conducted at a witness' home. A conventional lineup would cost at least £800 and could take up to ten weeks to set up – a VIPER parade costs around £150 and can be constructed in a few minutes. The system operates on a

virtual private network A virtual private network (VPN) extends a private network across a public network and enables users to send and receive data across shared or public networks as if their computing devices were directly connected to the private network. The be ...

operated by Cable and Wireless. When the system was introduced in Scotland,

Solicitor General for Scotland , body = , insignia = Crest of the Kingdom of Scotland.svg , insigniasize = 110px , image = File:Official Portrait of Ruth Charteris QC.png , incumbent = Ruth Charteris KC , incumbentsince = 22 June 2021 , department = Crown Office and ...

Elish Angiolini Lady Elish Frances Angiolini (''née'' McPhilomy; born 24 June 1960"Angiolini, Elish Frances" in ''Who's Who'', A & C Black.) is a Scottish lawyer. She was the Lord Advocate of Scotland from 2006 until 2011, having previously been Solicitor Ge ...

said "Viper is an excellent example of modernisation improving the service delivered to victims and witnesses. Old-style identification parades could be distressing for victims and witnesses and difficult to arrange quickly."

References

{{reflist, refs= {{cite news , url=http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/2850803.stm , title=Police offer virtual ID parades , date=14 March 2003 , work=

BBC News BBC News is an operational business division of the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) responsible for the gathering and broadcasting of news and current affairs in the UK and around the world. The department is the world's largest broadca ...

, accessdate=18 April 2012 {{cite news , url=http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/scotland/3590909.stm , title=Police to use virtual ID parades , work=

, date=1 April 2004 , accessdate=18 April 2012 {{cite web , url=http://www.zdnet.co.uk/news/networking/2003/03/17/police-suspects-face-viper-parade-2132017/ , title=Police suspects face Viper parade , author=Tony Hallett , publisher=

Ziff Davis Ziff Davis, Inc. is an American digital media and internet company. First founded in 1927 by William Bernard Ziff Sr. and Bernard George Davis, the company primarily owns technology-oriented media websites, online shopping-related services, an ...

, date=17 March 2003 , work=Silicon.com

External links

VIPER website
Law enforcement techniques