Arrests Resulting from Positive Matches Using Live Facial Recognition - 2023 to 2025

Publication Number: 1573

FOI Number: 21463

Information Request  

Please accept this request under the Freedom of Information Act. I’m seeking:

• The number of arrests made following positive matches during live facial recognition deployments, broken down by the offence for which the arrest was made.

FOI Duty  

First Duty – Essex Police does hold information relating to all your request.   

Second Duty – See below. 

Fact – See below. 

Exemption – Not applicable 

Essex Police can report as follows:   

Caveat: The data is correct as at 15/04/2025.

The number of arrests made following positive matches during live facial recognition deployments, broken down by the offence for which the arrest was made.

There have been a total of 56 arrests in Essex since first deployed. The following is a breakdown of offence type:

Burglary – 1

Court Warrants – 13

Drug Offences – 1

Attempted murder – 1

Stalking – 7

Theft – 10

Violence with injury – 14

Violence without injury - 8

Dangerous Dog -1

The following link may also be of use for you:

Live facial recognition | Essex Police

Every effort is made to ensure that the data provided by Essex Police is accurate and complete. However, Essex Police systems are designed primarily for the management of individual cases and not for the purposes of providing data to answer specific FOI enquiries. Please note although data can be extracted from a number of sources via database queries, the results may be subject to inaccuracies. Care should be taken to understand our return when considering the interpretation or further use of the data.