Police in Croydon made several arrests during a six-month pilot of live facial recognition (LFR) technology, which critics have called invasive and unregulated. The Metropolitan Police used high-definition cameras mounted on vans and lamp-posts to scan thousands of faces per hour, matching them against a database of wanted suspects and individuals under court orders.
During a single morning operation, the system triggered 19 alerts, resulting in nine arrests for crimes including rape, shoplifting, and breach of court orders. Officers received real-time alerts on handheld devices, allowing them to quickly detain suspects. One arrest involved a man who fought officers before being subdued and taken away in a police van.
The Met Police commissioner, Mark Rowley, has described LFR as a 'gamechanging' tool for public safety, citing 2,100 arrests linked to violence against women and girls since early 2024. In one case, the system detected a registered sex offender alone with a six-year-old girl, leading to his arrest and a two-year jail sentence.
However, privacy advocates have raised concerns about racial bias and the lack of regulation. The Met says independent testing by the National Physical Laboratory found the system to be accurate and balanced across ethnicity and gender at the threshold used, with only 12 false alerts from over 3 million faces captured in 2025.
Public opinion in Croydon was divided. Some residents expressed unease about being scanned without consent, while others supported the technology as a means to catch criminals. Street signs warned pedestrians of the surveillance, but many were unaware their faces were being analysed.
