London’s police force to double use of live facial recognition

The move by the Metropolitan Police comes as it restructures to cover the loss of 1,400 officers and 300 staff amid budget shortages.

Transcript

00:00The Metropolitan Police's Public Order Crime Team will go from 48 to 63 officers due to a rise in

00:08the number of protests, particularly related to Israel and Palestine, as well as environmental

00:15issues. We don't have any powers that are there to reduce the number of protests, to cancel them.

00:22Our laws are very permissive and encouraging the protests, which is entirely understandable and

00:27I've got no objection to that, but what we've seen unfortunately is a proportion of those create

00:32crime and offences and so our teams have got to increase those. But most of what we're talking

00:37about today is about we're launching the next phase of our plans in terms of improving the policing of

00:43London. The first phase, New Met for London, has had enormous success, confidence and trust are

00:49growing in London and it's higher than most other parts of the other big cities in the country.

00:54London's a really safe place to live and work. I mean, injury violence is lower in London than

01:00other cities. As part of the latest details of its restructure, the Met announced that live facial

01:06recognition will now be used up to 10 times per week across five days, up from the current four times

01:15per week across two days. However, however, there has perhaps unsurprisingly been some backlash to this

01:24announcement. Charlie Wilton, policy and campaign officer at Human Rights Group Liberty, said it's

01:34incredibly concerning to see an expansion of facial recognition, especially at a time when there is a

01:42complete lack of regulation governing its use. The head of the Metropolitan Police, Sir Mark Gurley,

01:48insisted that the technology is responsibly used. Murder in London is lower than every

01:54state in America. It's lower than New York, it's lower than Toronto, it's lower than Berlin, it's lower

01:58than Barcelona, it's lower than Brussels, it's lower than Paris. And through these plans, we've tripled

02:04the number of people we're charging with offences against women and girls. So we've made massive strides.

02:08What's next? So we're launching that plan today as part of it, even though we've got difficult

02:13financial times, we're going to make cuts in certain parts of the organisation. Some things are so

02:18important, we're still putting more resource into them. And today we're talking about putting more

02:21resource into facial recognition that you've mentioned, into the flying squad who helped deal

02:25with the organised crime behind robberies of shop premises and that sort of thing.