Johnny Lawman all up on you? RUN!

A recent study in Psychological Science reports that cops who are knackered are less likely to recognise suspects later. 52 cops took part in the study, with about half being made to exercise until they were exhausted, then confronted with a crime-scene.

The researchers report:

"Participants who completed the assault exercise showed impaired recall and recognition performance compared with the control group. Specifically, they provided significantly less accurate information concerning critical and incidental target individuals encountered during the scenario, recalled less briefing information, and provided fewer briefing updates than control participants did. "

It would also seem that cops who were tired were much less likely to recognise suspects in police line-ups.

"Exertion was also associated with reduced accuracy in identifying the critical target from a lineup."

In fact, the 'fresh' cops were about twice as likely to recall a suspect accurately in a line-up.

"Only 27 per cent of those who had exercised were later able to identify the suspect in an ID parade, compared with 54 per cent of those who had not. Those who had exercised also recalled just 56 per cent of the required details about the suspect compared with 84 per cent from the non-exercisers."

Interesting enough.