Facial Recognition Used to Deal with London Shoplifters

Facial recognition technology to be introduced to crack down on shoplifting targeting retail businesses in London.

01:02 24 October 2023

The Metropolitan Police is set to use a "game-changing" facial recognition technology to address the growing number of shoplifting incidents targeting retail businesses in London. The authorities will start using CCTV images as well as body-worn and camera phone footage to match offenders with existing custody images. 

The facial recognition technology, which has been described as "essentially 100per cent accurate", is designed to generate probable matches to an image in as fast as 60 seconds. 

Met Commissioner Sir Mark Rowley said: “It’s clear the majority [of people carrying out retail crimes] are career criminals involved in serious crime. This data and information helps us focus our efforts in an even more precise way than we originally anticipated."

“Through this tactic we’re not only improving how we protect shops and support the business community, we’re stepping further forward in identifying and tracking down serious criminals and protecting all of London's communities.

“The scale of business crime in London is huge. To be successful we have to be precise in our approach and this is a really promising step forward.”

Lindsey Chiswick, director of intelligence at the Met Police, addded: “We’ve done independent testing of this system and it came back as being really, really accurate and the alternative to not using this technology is a human sitting there and manually having to look at every image which could take weeks or months.”

Mark Johnson, from the group Big Brother Watch, also said: “Surveillance technology used in the total absence of safeguards or even any kind of parliamentary scrutiny is not a substitute for a well-resourced police force."

He added: “We urgently need a democratic, lawful approach to the role of facial biometrics in Britain, and without this, police forces should not be using this Orwellian technology at all. Strict rules govern police use of DNA and fingerprints, yet police are writing their own rules on the use of our face prints.”