A man jailed for stealing computer equipment from shops and schools in west London was caught by police thanks to his t-shirt.
Richard Shelley, 38, of Griffin Manor Way, Plumstead, was jailed for five years on Thursday (May 5) at Southwark Crown Court for 11 counts of burglary.
Police revealed on Saturday (May 21) that their 'combined super recognisers' skills' with computer analysis of the suspect's t-shirt, is what led to police finding him.
The burglaries were committed between January 2013 and June 2015 and many of the items stolen by Shelley were laptops and computer equipment used in education.
He targeted shops and schools at locations across London, including Westminster, Waltham Forest, Hammersmith and Fulham and Richmond-upon-Thames.
Shelley had been captured on CCTV at a number of crime scenes and detectives from the Met's Super Recognisers Unit used the Forensic Image Linking system [FILM] to identify suspect images that showed a suspect with a similar appearance to Shelley.
Detective Sergeant Eliot Porritt of the Super Recognisers Unit said: "The Super Recogniser Unit continues to identify and link crimes committed by habitual offenders.
“Even when a criminal is serving a sentence, they can be linked to additional crimes and further arrested.
“If a crime has been committed and it is caught on camera, we will do our utmost to identify the suspect.
Identifying Shelley, officers found that he regularly wore a particular shirt with a distinctive logo on it, which were ran through logo recognition software.
Now police were able to locate additional offences committed by Shelley when he was wearing the distinctive t-shirt.
Stress and inconvenience caused is 'immeasurable'
DS Porritt added: "Shelley has demonstrated that he is a habitual burglar.
“The distress and inconvenience caused to the owners, service users and employees at the venues he targeted is immeasurable.
“We are delighted that the communities of London will not be subjected to his criminal activities for some time."
The facial recognition identifications made by the recognisers combined with the logo recognition searches resulted in the 11 convictions for burglary.
When police arrested Shelley, he was already serving a suspended sentence for burglary.
DCI Mick Neville, head of the Central Image Forensic Team said: "Once again Scotland Yard is at the forefront of developing crime fighting tools.“Many criminals wear logos and patterns on their clothes and this software will allow us to target even more prolific criminals.
"The FILM system enables our super recognisers to industrialise the number of convictions from CCTV - with the addition of logo recognition software we can improve it further still.
“By using images in this systematic way, we can now solve thousands more crimes and make London safer."
