Technology Helped Nab Mezuzah Arson Suspect

Meanwhile, the Daily News quotes NYPD sources as saying that Ublies, a 35-year-old who lived sporadically in Williamsburg with his grandmother, was captured using facial recognition technology that was recently acquired.

Working with a video that caught him leaving the building where he allegedly burned a mezuzah on Tuesday, police submitted a shot of the side of his head to the computer, which spit out the name of Ruben Ublies, well-known to police for his prodigious arrest record. They also found that he had a friend living in Bedford Stuyvesant, so they headed over.

Police found Ublies cowering under a bed in the apartment and took him in for questioning. He was arrested shortly afterward.

“Facial recognition involves distances and proportions on the face, distances between the eyes and the ear, things like that,” said a source. “We had a good angle on his ear that helped to identify him.”

While police say that Ublies had made statement implicating himself in the burning of the mezuzos at two locations in south Williamsburg on Monday and Tuesday, he had earlier taken to his social media account to deny any involvement.

“I’m going to get my name cleared,” Ubiles wrote on Wednesday, much of it in all-caps, after police released his image but before he was taken in.

“One thing I wouldn’t do, aside from my history,” Ublies, who belonged to the Latin Kings gang, added, “I’m know[n] for getting into fights, not wasting my time attempting to destroy what ‘they’ claim I have torched. I’m know[n] for fighting, not arson.”

A friend told ABC News that Ublies was at a library during the time the fires were lit.

Ublies claimed that he was arrested due to his rap sheet — he was reportedly arrested 52 times before, mostly for robbery, slashing tires and assault, in a record dating back to 1995.

Following a long interrogation, including going through various aliases Ublies used over the years and an alibi he provided, Ublies was first charged with violating an order of protection unrelated to the arson. Hours later, he was hit with a set of charges that included burglary, arson and criminal mischief — all as hate crimes. That classification could add years to a potential prison term.

This article appeared in print on page 1 of the April 12th, 2013 edition of Hamodia.