Overview

• The Home Office will deploy live facial recognition vans to seven more forces – Greater Manchester, West Yorkshire, Bedfordshire, Surrey, Sussex, Thames Valley and Hampshire – as part of its neighbourhood policing overhaul.
• Eleven civil liberty and anti-racist organisations have written to Metropolitan Police Commissioner Mark Rowley demanding the cancellation of LFR plans at Notting Hill Carnival over fears it will target the African-Caribbean community.
• An independent National Physical Laboratory report found that the Met’s NeoFace system shows higher misidentification rates for women and people of colour when operated at lower sensitivity thresholds.
• Anti-knife crime campaigner Shaun Thompson has filed a High Court challenge after being wrongfully stopped, detained and asked for fingerprints by officers acting on a facial recognition match earlier this year.
• Police leaders assert that LFR has supported around 580 arrests in the past year through targeted, intelligence-led operations while critics highlight its lack of a specific statutory framework and unverified cost-effectiveness.