Live facial recognition op leads to five Croydon arrests

The Met has revealed the latest use of live facial recognition (LFR) cameras led to five arrests in Croydon on Friday afternoon.

LFR technology scans the faces of people passing through an area against a watchlist of people wanted by police and sets off an alert when a match is made.

An officer will then review the match and decide if they wish to speak with the individual.

The deployment of LFR was intended to combat violence in the area, which the Met says is one of the primary concerns of residents.

The five arrested included:

• A 32-year-old woman for failing to appear at court for burglary.
• A 50-year-old man for failing to comply with his conditions as a Registered Sex Offender.
• A 34-year-old man for robbery – wanted by police.
• A 36-year-old wanted by the court for offences in relation to animal cruelty.
• A 31-year-old woman wanted for failing to appear at court for drink-drive related offences.

Lindsey Chiswick, responsible for LFR for the Met, said: “As part of our commitment to building A New Met For London, we are using this technology to identify harmful criminals.

“Trying to identify people who are wanted by the police is not new. LFR does what the police have always done but with much more accuracy, precision and far quicker. If there is no match, all biometric details are immediately destroyed.”

“We communicate each LFR deployment in the local area before the technology is in operation and use local neighbourhood officers and leaflets to explain the benefits of the technology while it’s live.”

Use of LFR is not without controversy and has attracted criticism from civil liberties groups, as previously reported in the South London Press.

The privacy campaign group Big Brother Watch has hit out at the Met’s facial recognition system, claiming it has the potential to “entrench racial bias” in policing.

Police are increasingly using the system, which cross-checks a live camera feed of faces against a database of known identities and custody images to make arrests.

The system was trialled to see if there was potential for bias and misidentification, but the Met said there were “no false matches” – where an image could be used to identify the wrong person in an arrest.

Pictured top: A camera being used during trials at Scotland Yard for the new facial recognition system (Picture: PA)