Tracking down suspected coronavirus patients using crime-solving skills
Police work such as observing surveillance footage, data analytic tools are used in fight against outbreak
Find two moviegoers at a cinema in Orchard Road.
That was the brief for Sergeant Loh Seng Hong of Orchard Neighbourhood Police Centre, who had to identify the people who had sat near a coronavirus patient, identified as Case 48, in a cinema.
With just blurry images off surveillance footage, Sgt Loh and his colleagues did what they were trained to do: They looked at the body language of the two people.
While the Ministry of Health (MOH) conducts tests on suspected patients, it needs the help of the police to trace close contacts. That is where the investigative capabilities of the Criminal Investigation Department come in.
The police's contact tracing operations consist of a command centre divided into three sub-teams: the interview team, the analysis team and the field team.
Sgt Loh, 33, is part of the field team that does groundwork, going door to door and to various locations around the island to track people down.
They do this on top of their regular policing duties.
Sgt Loh, who typically handles theft-related cases, said being attentive to details is a crucial step in identifying someone.
He said: "Over the years, officers have picked up skills to be sensitive to, say, the walking patterns of an individual.
"The cameras from the malls don't have the best quality and we couldn't see the faces clearly. But I noted the description of an individual's arm movements and their attire to trace them."
SEAT NUMBER
Sgt Loh knew the seat numbers of Case 48 and the two close contacts from information provided by MOH.
It took him and his team about a day to trace the two moviegoers.
The New Paper understands the two do not know each other.
Said Sgt Loh: "When we finally established the two identities, we knocked on their doors and finally confirmed it was them."
As a member of the police analysis team, Ms He Minghui, 37, uses data analytic tools like word cloud to crunch down big data to identify potential links.
Coming up with hypotheses helps Ms He and her colleagues to backward trace the activities of confirmed cases to find close contacts.
It was her team that established the link between the Life Church and Missions cluster and a Chinese New Year gathering in Mei Hwan Drive on Jan 25.
Ms He said Case 48, a 34-year-old church employee at the Grace Assembly of God, got infected by a colleague, Case 66. She drilled down on Case 66's activity log and noticed a CNY gathering.
Assistant Superintendent of Police (ASP) Johnny Lim, from the interview team, then retrieved a list of attendees from the gathering and it showed Cases 83 and 91, a married couple, were there.
They had attended a Life Church and Missions service on Jan 19.
ASP Lim said contact tracing efforts require similar skill sets to crime solving, like piecing together information from different people and places.
ASP Lim, a criminal investigator in organised crime, said some of the challenges his team faced included patients getting frustrated when they had trouble recalling details.
"They can get quite impatient when they have to repeat things," he said.
The father of three children, aged seven to 12, said officers are working longer hours to help fight the Covid-19 outbreak.
"There is no choice but to put family time on hold, for now. The virus doesn't wait," he said."
How to identify and authenticate contact tracing officers
With scam cases on the rise, the police are advising the public to be on the lookout for fake officers phishing for personal and confidential information. If approached, the public should:
- Seek out a warrant card to verify the officer's identity
- Call and check with the officer's headquarters - either a neighbourhood police centre or the Criminal Investigation Department
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