TWIGGS COUNTY, Ga. — A facial recognition technology is helping law enforcement in Central Georgia identify suspects, solve crimes and reconnect families with missing loved ones. The Twiggs County Sheriff’s Office has been using Clearview AI, a tool that allows deputies to upload or take a photo and search public online databases for matches tied to a person’s face. Joshua Nobles, an investigator with the sheriff’s office, said the system has been in use for about three years and has become a valuable resource in investigations. “In a nutshell, you just click whether you want to do a victim, suspect, person of interest, humanitarian, or lost or missing persons,” Nobles said. “Then it will prompt you to a different page, and from that page you can import a picture … and then it will come up with the results.” Nobles said the software pulls images and information from publicly available sources online. “Anything public on the internet, it will pull from that and then tells me where the picture’s at, the name and everything else on it,” he said. The technology can cost thousands of dollars and is not widely used by all agencies, particularly smaller departments. Nobles said Twiggs County initially gained access to the tool through another agency during an identity theft case and later adopted it. Since then, he said the department has used the technology in hundreds of cases and has assisted agencies across the state. “I’ve assisted all the way from Atlanta, all the way down to south Georgia,” Nobles said. “We’ve solved a homicide in Atlanta, a cold case robbery in south Georgia, and several cases here in middle Georgia.” He said the tool has been especially useful in identity theft and fraud investigations, which continue to increase. “If we have a photograph of