facial recognition

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.

This week we monitored a met police live facial recognition deployment in Croydon. 83% were wrongful stopped, and we witnessed systemic racism with most black suspects (all innocent) being immediately handcuffed before checks were carried out despite fully cooperating with the police – one shackled for over 30mins, whilst white suspects were never handcuffed before checks were carried out. Black innocent suspects were on average stopped for over twice as long as white innocent suspects.