Facial recognition cameras have resulted in multiple sex offenders being arrested in just a few weeks, police have said.
Greater Manchester Police said it has used Live Facial Recognition (LFR) cameras 23 times since October – and in that time, one in five of all arrests made have involved registered sex offenders.
The cameras, which are positioned on top of special police vans, scan faces for unique biometric data (‘faceprints’) and instantly compare them to a watchlist of wanted offenders, alerting officers if a match is found.
As well as taking them on deployments in the city centre and at the airport, GMP put them outside Old Trafford for the Manchester United vs Manchester City derby earlier this month – the first time the force has ever used them at a football match.
LFR cameras have been supplied to police forces by the Home Office under a series of nationwide trials, with a recent Metropolitan Police pilot on a lamppost in Croydon resulting in an arrest every 34 minutes on average.
On Monday, Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood announced the vans would soon be made available to all forces in England and Wales as part of her ‘once-in-a-generation’ policing shake-up, with the total number of camera vans rising from…
What were they arrested for? Simply for being identified in public?
“with another man in the city square arrested on suspicion of possession of indecent images”
now how did the facial recognition program know that he had indecent images? This is going too far!
1 in 5 are PFRs, so what are the other 4? Shouldn’t the public know the full breakdown?
40 arrests and 30 charged which begs to know about the ten who weren’t charged. Were they mistaken ID by the camera?
The article is lacking details the public may want to know since it very pro-surveillance with the van cameras.
As we’ve all witnessed over the past couple of weeks, record EVERY interaction with cops when they do complance checks. I have doorcams AND hidden cams. It’s difficult for them to control the narrative when you have visual evidence that upends their claims.