Government rolls out expansion of police facial recognition vans

Evening Standard

Live facial recognition will be expanded across the country as part of a Government overhaul of neighbourhood policing.The technology will be deployed to catch “high-harm” offenders, with new rules drawn up to support its use and ensure “safeguards and oversight”, the Home Office said.

Transcript

00:00This is about giving the tools to our police officers to enable them to keep us safe.

00:05And the live facial recognition results in London, where it's been used in the past 12 months,

00:12over 580 arrests were made.

00:15And these included people who were wanted for rape, for GBH, for robbery, for domestic abuse,

00:23and also for sex offenders who were breaching their conditions of being out in the community.

00:30So I think this is a really powerful tool for policing.

00:33And it's actually a tool. It's not an automated decision maker.

00:38So the police then have to, the police officer has to look at what's being put up on the screen

00:43and decide what to do next.

00:45So there's that human involvement, but it's a really powerful tool,

00:49which I think the public would actually be supportive of being used in a very measured,

00:57proportionate way to go after those individuals that the police are looking for,

01:03for these serious offences.

01:04So it's looking for specific people, is it?

01:07Yes.

01:07It wouldn't just go into a crowd and randomly look to find out who was there?

01:12No.

01:13And so when I went to Croydon to see a deployment of live facial recognition,

01:17it was a van parked in the town centre.

01:21There were signs all the way round saying that this was actually happening.

01:25And what had happened the night before was the police had put together a watch list

01:29of those individuals they were looking for, and they used that on the day.

01:33And then once that deployment had concluded, that list was deleted.

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