The London Police Ethics Panel has indicated that they will consider our report on the Mets deployment of live facial recognition surveillance in Croydon as part of their five year review of Metropolitan Police use of live facial recognition in London. Our report documents systemic racism in how the technology is used by the Met and also bias in the technology against people of colour.
A Million Faces Scanned By A Biased System
The Metropolitan Police have scanned the faces of over a million people in London, stealing their biometric data without their consent, using their controversial live facial recognition surveillance vans. Every time someone walks near the van they are treated like suspects forced into a digital line up against an undisclosed police watchlist.
Independent studies show the technology discriminates against people of colour. The police’s own research shows that at certain settings 22 out of 33 people falsely identified were black.
Targeting People Of Colour - Croydon
Croydon is by far the most surveilled borough in the whole of the UK with more live facial recognition surveillance deployments by the Met than even Westminster! Since April 2023 we have seen 37 deployments in Croydon compared to 31 in Westminster (the second highest).
Croydon has the largest black population of any borough in London. The neighbourhood’s targeted by live facial recognition surveillance are the town centre and Thornton Heath, where racialized communities are concentrated. Predominantly white areas have been spared.
Live facial recognition surveillance is an oppressive instrument of control which targets marginalised groups like people of colour. Its the latest form of racialized surveillance.
Even the president of the National Black Police Association, Andy George is alarmed at how the Met is “setting up live facial recognition to disproportionately impact the Black community in London” deploying it into “almost singular black communities rather than other parts”.
Monitoring The Mets Live Facial Recognition Deployment in Croydon
On 28th September 2024 we monitored the Mets live facial recognition surveillance deployment in Croydon town centre.
In summary we witnessed:
- Every single black person that was stopped was wrongfully stopped for no reason. (Overall 83% of all people were wrongfully stopped).
- Every single black person stopped by white officers was immediately handcuffed before any checks were carried out, whilst no white person was handcuffed until checks confirmed they were wanted by the police.
- Black people were stopped for 2-3 times longer than white people (one innocent black person was handcuffed for over 30 minutes, humiliated for no reason).
Clearly such technology in the hands of an institutionally racist police force inevitably produces racist outcomes.
The full report of our findings is available here:
Watching The Watchers
Later we discovered that due to the late announcement of the deployment by the Met, we had missed Dr Jyoti Belur from the London Policing Ethics Panel who had been invited to attend.
Letter to The London Policing Ethics Panel
So we wrote to the Panel sharing our findings of the deployment they had attended and the communities concerns.
Explaining that over 20 community organisations supported by local councillors, and a local Member of Parliament, had written to the metropolitan police, demanding an end to such intrusive surveillance of our community. The letter had fallen on deaf ears.
PDF of letter
The London Policing Ethics Panel has indicated that they will consider our report, in its five year review of Metropolitan Police use of live facial recognition in London.
This is in sharp contrast to the Metropolitan Police Service who seem to be actively trying to stop our findings from reaching the community. Everytime the Met announces a deployment in Croydon we reply to their tweet with a summary of our findings and link to our full report.
Recently the Met have disabled replies specifically to these deployment tweets – other tweets are unaffected. It’s a blatant attempt to take away the community’s right to reply.
We urge the Metropolitan Police Service to engage with the concerns of the community rather than to try and silence us. We will not be silenced.
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Watching The Watchers
Why is the Met running ‘off the books’ facial recognition surveillance of #Filton10 Palestine protest?
Community Demands Police Stop Facial Recognition Surveillance
Met’s Lead On Facial Recognition – Insightful Exchange
Stop Police Facial Recognition Surveillance
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