MORE than 100 wanted criminals have been arrested by police in the first few months of a pilot programme using live facial recognition cameras.
Essex Police, South Wales Police and the Metropolitan Police were the first forces in the country to adopt the pilot programme where live facial recognition (LFR) cameras were mounted onto street furniture.
Essex Police deployed the technology more than 70 times between October 2023 and August 2025 and found success with a high accurate alert rate and some arrests.
Members of the public were welcome to visit the vans with LFR cameras affixed to the top, while the force insisted the equipment was not a “secret covert operation”.
Since October, the Metropolitan Police said LFR cameras have been fixed to structures like lamp posts in Croydon and their feeds monitored remotely for the first time.
It led to 103 arrests, a third of which were over offences which involved violence against women and girls, according to the force.
Those arrested also included a woman who had been at large for more than 20 years, who was wanted for failing to appear at court for an assault in 2004; a man wanted on suspicion of kidnap; and a sex offender suspected of breaching his Sexual Harm Prevention Order.
Since the start of 2024, the Met has taken more than 1,700 offenders off the streets of London using LFR, including those wanted for rape and child abuse. The force has hailed the technology’s “impact and success”.
But the technology has faced criticism, with the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) last year describing the Met Police’s policy on use of live facial recognition technology as “unlawful”.
The equalities watchdog said the rules and safeguards around the UK’s biggest police force’s use of the technology “fall short” and could have a “chilling effect” on individuals’ rights when used at protests.
In response, the force defended its use as “both lawful and proportionate, playing a key role in keeping Londoners safe”.
Campaign organisations have also objected to the technology, with civil liberty group Big Brother Watch claiming “facial recognition surveillance” turns the country into “an open prison”.
In December, ministers seeking to ramp up police use of facial recognition to fight crime across the country launched a 10-week consultation to ask for views on how the technology should be regulated and how to protect people’s privacy.
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The Government was also proposing to create a regulator to oversee police use of facial recognition, biometrics and other tools and is collecting opinions on what powers it should have.
The Met has said it currently has no plans to extend the scheme beyond Croydon, while there are currently no upcoming deployments planned by Essex Police.
In November, a new fleet of LFR vans was rolled out by Greater Manchester, West Yorkshire, Bedfordshire, Surrey, Sussex, Thames Valley and Hampshire police forces in an expanded pilot programme.
The Home Office spent £6.6million last year on evaluating and adopting the technology, including £3.9million on creating a national facial matching service.
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