00:00So my name is Paul Bartolomeo, I'm the Assistant Chief Constable for Crime and Criminal Justice
00:04here in Hampshire in Idylwyc and Constabulary. So today we're running a new trial using the
00:09latest technology across Southampton where we're using facial recognition technology to quickly
00:16scan members of the public's faces to see whether they are wanted for offences or whether they've
00:21failed to appear at court and if they are our officers are then going to speak to them entertain
00:26them if they're not and I want to reassure the public if you're not on our watch list if you're
00:30not in those categories of wanted for an offence or failing to set up a court then your image is
00:35scanned and deleted within half a second and no record is kept of that. So the technology
00:41uses high definition cameras to scan the features of individuals faces that are unique to all of us
00:47and then that matches against our watch list or it doesn't match against our watch list and so
00:52as an example yesterday in Portsmouth we scanned over 35,000 faces and we arrested two people we
00:58didn't stop and speak to anybody that wasn't on our watch list and today in Southampton we've got
01:03four vans out looking to do exactly the same we've already arrested one person who failed to turn up
01:09at court. We consider very carefully our watch list here consists of two groups of people
01:15one is people that have been charged and have meant to appear at court have failed to appear at
01:21court and of course if they don't appear at court a warrant is issued for their arrest and we look
01:25to detain them put them back before the court so that the victim can have justice. The other group
01:30of offenders the other group on the list is individuals who are wanted for offences here
01:35in Hampshire that we just don't know where they are we've tried previous addresses we haven't been
01:38able to locate them so we want to detain arrest those question them for the offence then decide
01:43whether they go before a court or not. The vast I've been here for the last two hours the vast
01:48majority in fact almost everybody I've spoken to has been really positive about what we're doing
01:53so it's great for community engagement they're reassured the local police force is using cutting
01:58edge technology to apprehend those criminals and put them before the court so they're very very
02:02supportive of what we're doing. To answer your question on the other side so some people are
02:06concerned about privacy and to reassure those we take that very very seriously so we've taken
02:13the best practice from other forces the learning from other cases that have gone before criminal
02:17and civil courts we've spoken to our own independent ethics committee our own data
02:24data protection assessment we've completed and to just to reassure the public that if you're not on
02:30that watch list within it's less than half a second your image is taken checked and deleted
02:35and there's no record kept of that scam. I think we would so we were really really keen to assess
02:42the effectiveness and efficiency it's efficient way of policing in my view over the next three
02:47days so we'll take that into the round and obviously we'll then speak to our police and
02:51crime commissioner about how we might take that that funding forward.
Comments