Live Facial Recognition leads to 12 arrests

The deployment of Live Facial Recognition by the Metropolitan Police led to 12 arrests on Tuesday 9 April.

On Tuesday morning, a man was arrested by officers after breaching his sexual harm prevention order following an alert at a previous deployment in Clapham. Following the alert, an investigation found that he was sending explicit images to children. He has been charged with two counts of sexual communication with a child and has been remanded in custody.

The same day, officers made 11 arrests at two deployments in Sutton and Woolwich. One of those was a man who was wanted for possession of an offensive weapon. He was found to be carrying a knife when stopped by officers.

Other arrests include: a woman wanted for malicious communications; a man wanted for theft and possession of an offensive weapon; a man wanted for burglary and theft and two men wanted for threatening behaviour.

Lindsey Chiswick, who is the Met’s director of intelligence said: “As part of A New Met for London, which everyone across the organisation is committed to, we are guided by data. The data for our deployments is available to the public and shows the technology is outperforming what an independent study predicted. Reports into law enforcement use of this technology found the public are mostly supportive of it and that is the feedback we receive when they speak with officers at deployments.

“It’s vital we bring communities in London with us so we are continuing work with independent advisory groups and invite them to deployments.

“I will continue to reassure Londoners that all biometric data where there is not a match is deleted within a second and cannot be retrieved by police.”