Source: United Kingdom National Police Chiefs Council
Chief Constable Jeremy Vaughan, National Police Chiefs’ Council Lead for Biometrics, hosted a briefing at the APCC/NPCC Summit earlier today about the use of facial recognition by forces around the country. He was joined by Police and Crime Commissioner Alun Michael, Joint National Lead for Biometrics.
Here is a summary of the main highlights discussed and some background information to aid with reporting.
Additional notes to editors:
- Criminals should be very concerned about our use of facial recognition technology (FRT) and the expansion of it across policing.
- The public already broadly supports police use of FRT – polling shows us that clearly (YouGov). Law abiding public have nothing to worry about.
- As we embrace its adoption, communities and victims of crime will see the benefits it brings to investigations and in the pursuit of criminals.
- Operator Initiated Facial Recognition is a mobile app that allows officers, after engaging with a person of interest, to photograph them and check their identity where they are not sure, without having to arrest them and taken them into custody. It is at the early trial stage but has been showing positive results.
- Our ambition is that by May 2024 we will:
o Increase the use of retrospective facial recognition (RFR) to identify people in images by 100 percent;
o Agree the plans for future RFR technology (the ‘roadmap’) that will also be able to support operator initiated facial recognition (OIFR) on a national level;
o Lay the groundwork for the wider adoption of other facial recognition capabilities, such as operator initiated facial recognition.
- Some forces are already beginning to trial live facial recognition on a mutual aid basis.
- There is also interest from a number of forces in developing a local operator initiated facial recognition solution.
- We want to share best practice and gather insight on the barriers and challenges you identify.
Examples:
- A man was arrested at the King’s Coronation on the 6 May this year following a live facial recognition (LFR) alert. He was wanted on a recall to prison notice. This notice was issued as he had failed to comply with the conditions that had been set following his conviction for offences under the Sexual Offences Act (trigger offence was rape). As a result of this arrest, the man was returned to prison. On 10 November the same man activated the LFR system during another deployment. He had again breached his sex offenders reporting conditions. He was arrested.
- A stalker was convicted after repeatedly going to his victim’s place of work, being aggressive and harassing her. A CCTV image was matched to one on file and the suspect was identified within one hour.
- A man with a gun was seen in an altercation with a large group of youths causing a member. Image taken from a town centre CCTV matched an image on file and he was identified within 10 hours.
- A South Wales Police study found that retrospective facial recognition takes minutes to identify a suspect. Without it – 14 days.
- The same force identifies 200 suspects every single month through its use.
- The Met is deploying RFR to crackdown on retail crime, identifying 149 suspects in a matter of days from 302 CCTV stills. Some were wanted for multiple serious offences.
- British Transport Police are deploying it to identify abusers who prey on women on trains, tubes and buses.