Southend: Seven arrests during Live Facial Recognition Deployment

Seven people were arrested having been identified by our Live Facial Recognition (LFR) technology during a deployment in Southend last week.

Our two LFR vans were in the city between Thursday (19 September) and Sunday (22 September) as part of our response to incident of violence a week earlier (Sunday 15 September) where four people were arrested.

Across the four days there were a total of 14 positive alerts which led to seven people arrested.

These arrests included in connection with an aggravated burglary, a domestic assault, assaulting an emergency worker, and shoplifting.

Seven other people were spoken to and we have been able to further the investigations we wanted to speak to them in connection with as a result.

It means that since our first deployment a month ago, 16 people have now been arrested having been identified by our LFR vans.

There have been 30 positive alerts and zero incorrect alerts.

Superintendent Leigh Norris said:

“This was a really positive deployment and we’ve been able to bring multiple suspects into custody as a result.

“The deployment of our Live Facial Recognition vans also provides a fantastic opportunity to engage with the public and our officers enjoyed speaking to the public and explaining how it works.

“This technology has been used to great effect so far and you can expect to see us utilise it more in the coming months.”

Supt Norris added:

“The technology utilises CCTV camera feeds to LFR software to scan faces against a predetermined database or ‘watch list’ of people of interest.

“The scanning of an image takes less than a second. The data or image of those not on the watchlist is automatically and immediately deleted and not stored.

“When there is a positive match, appropriate action will be taken by officers on the ground to confirm ID and then assess what the next action is to be taken.

“We publish details of each deployment in advance and also seek scrutiny from partners such as Independent Advisory Groups to ensure our accountability.”

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