Agencies should be cognizant of the scientific research regarding eyewitness perception and memory, and the limits of eyewitness evidence.

Police agencies should adopt standard, written eyewitness identification procedures to regulate the use of showups, lineups, photo arrays, and any other eyewitness identification techniques they employ, whether in the field or the station. Agencies should ensure that the specific procedures they use to test the memory of an eyewitness are informed by extant research. Those…

Policing agencies should not conduct eyewitness identifications unless they have: (a) a substantial basis to believe that the suspect committed the crime and should therefore be presented to the eyewitness, and (b) a substantial basis to believe that the eyewitness can reliably make an identification.

Agencies should minimize the use of showup procedures and should adopt standard procedures for conducting prompt showups in a neutral manner and location.

For all identification procedures other than showups, agencies should adopt procedures in which the person administering the identification procedure does not know which person is the suspect. There are two options: (a) blind procedures, in which the person who administers the procedure does not know the suspect; or (b) blinded procedures, in which the person…

Agencies should ask eyewitnesses to express verbally how confident they are in their identification at the time it is made and should document that verbal representation.

Officers should not provide feedback, encouragement, or reinforcement to eyewitnesses before, during, or after an identification procedure.

As a matter of standard practice, eyewitness identification procedures should be recorded when feasible.