Live Facial Recognition helping to make the capital safer, according to new report

Source: United Kingdom London Metropolitan Police

The report includes in-depth analysis about the Met’s use of the tool between September 2024 and September 2025, when LFR deployments led to 962 arrests. Over a quarter of these arrests were for individuals involved in violence against women and girls, including those suspected of rape, strangulation and domestic abuse.

This brings the total number of LFR arrests to over 1400 – of which more than 1,000 people have been charged or cautioned.

These are criminals who were wanted by police or the courts, as well as offenders who were in breach of court-imposed conditions, such as sex offenders or stalkers.

These people may otherwise have remained unlawfully at large, posing a continued threat to the public and taking up much more officer time to try and locate them.

The report also demonstrates how the Met is using LFR to focus resourcing to areas where there are higher rates of crime. This is helping make those communities safe and pursue the criminals who pose the greatest risk.

Public support also remains strong, with 85% of Londoners backing the use of LFR to keep them safe.

And not only is the tool helping to reduce crime in the capital, but it’s also helping to drive trust of the force within the communities it serves – with 74% of Londoners now trusting the Met.

Lindsey Chiswick, the lead for LFR at the Met and nationally, said:

“We are proud of the results achieved with LFR. Our goal has always been to keep Londoners safe and improve the trust of our communities. Using this technology is helping us do exactly that.

“This is a powerful and game-changing tool, which is helping us to remove dangerous offenders from our streets and deliver justice for victims.

“We remain committed to being transparent and engaging with communities about our use of LFR, to demonstrate we are using it fairly and without bias.”

With an exceptionally low false alert rate of just 0.0003% from more than three million faces scanned, the technology has proven both effective and accurate.

Nobody has been arrested on the back of a false alert, with four out of the 10 people falsely alerted by the system not stopped at all. The remaining six people were all spoken to by officers for under five minutes.

Independent testing has also continued to show that the tool performs consistently across different demographic groups, with the Met also emphasising the robust safeguards in place to protect people’s rights and privacy. For example, if a member of the public walks past an LFR camera and is not wanted by the police, their biometrics are immediately and permanently deleted.

Case studies

In May 2024, 27-year-old Oghenekaro Adeda (10.05.1998) of Lee High Road, Lewisham, was given a suspended sentence for harassment and stalking by the courts. He was also given a Sexual Harm Prevention Order (SHPO), which prevented him from using any software to hide his internet browsing history.

This court order meant Adeda formed part of the LFR watchlist, enabling officers to check whether the registered sex offender was adhering to these conditions.

14 months later on Tuesday, 15 July, the Met deployed LFR in Lewisham. Cameras alerted officers to Adeda, who was found to be using a private browsing application which hid his search history.

Thanks to this action, Adeda was sent to prison and is currently serving a 20-month sentence.

LFR was also used successfully at this year’s Notting Hill Carnival, helping to make this year’s event safer for all. The deployments saw suspects wanted for serious and violent offences on their way to a cell before they had the chance to join Carnival and potentially cause harm.

Across the two days, 61 people were arrested and 30 registered sex offenders were stopped – with three found to be in breach of their conditions.

One of the arrests made at Carnival was for an offender who had been wanted by the courts for nearly ten years for harassing a woman.

On Carnival Monday (25 August), the cameras were alerted to Tabsart Abderahmen, 58 (01.04.1967) of no fixed address. Abderahmen had been wanted since October 2015 and subsequently arrested by officers.

Building on this success, the Met will be scaling up its use of the technology in the coming months. The force will be increasing deployments each week, with additional support from officers and staff.

Background

Between September 2024 and 2025:

• There were a total of 203 LFR deployments to crime hotspot areas across all 32 boroughs in London.

• Each deployment is carefully planned based on an intelligence case and is guided by data to ensure resources are directed at offenders and areas where there is the greatest threat to public safety.

• Ahead of each deployment, the Met publicises details around the date, time and location of a deployment. As well as this, there is clear signage displaying that LFR is in operation, as well as uniformed officers.

• Within the relevant period, LFR deployments were typically carried out twice a week in four separate locations.

• These deployments resulted in 2077 total alerts. Of these alerts, 962 people were arrested.

• Of the 962 people who were arrested:
  • 549 were for those wanted by the courts
  • 347 were for those wanted by the Met
  • 85 were for a breach of conditions, including registered sex offenders and stalkers

• To date, the Met’s use of LFR has resulted in over 1400 arrests.

• Across the year, there were 10 false alerts. Four of these people were not stopped, while the remaining six were engaged with for under five minutes.

• Public Attitude Surveys commissioned by MOPAC in Quarter Four of 2024/25 showed 4 in 5 Londoners support the use of LFR. This is even higher (85%) across a number of uses including to locate serious and violent criminals, locate those wanted by the courts, and locate those at risk to themselves.

• According to the report, majority support was consistent across all London boroughs and demographic groups.

• Independent testing by the National Physical Laboratory has found that at the thresholds the MPS work at (minimum of 0.6, typically 0.64) the system is accurate and balanced with regard to ethnicity and gender. We always publish on the deployment log what threshold we operate at.

• The use of LFR is governed by data protection and equality laws and supported by polling across every London borough.

• The High Court and the Court of Appeal (Bridges case) have recognised the existing legal basis for the police to use LFR technology – namely under Common Law in the UK. The Met has a comprehensive policy on how it operates, which is publicised: lfr-policy-document2.pdf

• There are also a range of other laws alongside Common Law, which enable its usage, including Human Rights Law, Data Protection Law and Equalities Law.

• There is also oversight from regulators including the Information Commissioners Office and Biometrics and Surveillance Camera Commissioner. The Mayor’s Office for Policing and Crime also provide oversight.

• Public Attitude Surveys commissioned by MOPAC in Quarter One of 2025/26 showed trust in policing has increased to 74%, compared to 69% in Quarter Four of 2022/23.