London cops hail fixed facial recognition cams after suspects collared every 35 mins

Public sector

Croydon trial helped secure 173 arrests, though civil liberties groups remain unconvinced

London's Metropolitan Police Service (MPS) is giving its six-month trial of static live facial recognition (LFR) cameras credit for helping it secure an arrest every 35 minutes.

The Met's LFR chief said the results show why LFR is "such a powerful tool" for coppers, who, across 24 operations between October 2025 and March 2026, made 173 arrests.

Those arrested included people suspected of kidnapping and sex crimes, as well as others who had evaded law enforcement for decades.

Among those 173 arrests was that of a 36-year-old woman who had been wanted by the police after failing to appear at court for an assault in 2004.

The Met also arrested a 31-year-old man, wanted for more than six months in connection with voyeurism, and a 41-year-old man suspected of rape in November 2025.

Thirty-seven of the total 173 arrests related to those who had breached their court-imposed conditions, the Met said.

Nilton Darame, 25, was one of these individuals who had violated his electronic tag conditions and was found by a static camera alert in October last year, say cops. He was arrested on suspicion of intentional strangulation and two counts of assault on an emergency worker. In January, he was sentenced to 18 months in prison.

In November last year, the Met continues, Kastriot Krrashi, 35, was clocked by a Croydon LFR camera and stopped by officers on suspicion of breaching his conditions as a registered sex offender. He was later sentenced to six months in prison.

Officers were also alerted in January when LFR cameras identified Neville Cohen, 55, who was wanted after failing to attend Croydon Police Station in October 2025, as required by his Sexual Harm Prevention Order (SHPO).

The MPS said that after he attempted to flee from officers on the day, he was arrested and later sentenced to four months in prison.

Lindsey Chiswick, national and Met lead for LFR, said: "These results show why live facial recognition is such a powerful tool when it's used carefully, openly, and in the right places. Crime in this area is down by more than 10 percent, and the public can see the difference.

"This technology is helping us find people wanted by the courts, identify serious offenders quickly, and focus our resources where they make the biggest impact, all with exceptional accuracy.

"We will continue using static cameras in Croydon as part of our regular live facial recognition deployments, which play a vital part in keeping London safe."

The tech that helped secure these arrests was deployed in Croydon as part of the Met's first trial of fixed LFR cameras. Two cameras were deployed, one at each end of the town's High Street.

UK police typically use mobile forms of LFR, such as cameras that sit inside highly visible vans, marked with the usual fluorescent, reflective police decals seen on patrol cars.

These are usually situated in high-footfall areas across major towns and cities, and are only activated when the public is given prior warning and during limited hours.

Croydon's fixed cameras are instead permanently installed onto existing infrastructure, such as lampposts, but are not running 24/7. Like the LFR vans, they are only activated during defined operational timeframes and when there are police officers in the vicinity.

The MPS says that since the fixed cameras are monitored remotely, it frees up LFR vans to be deployed in other parts of the capital.

It wouldn't be an LFR announcement without a comment on accuracy. The Met said that more than 470,000 individuals walked past the two Croydon cameras during the trial's operational periods, and only one false positive was registered.

That individual was not arrested, and no one has ever been arrested as a result of a false positive LFR flag, the Met added.

Ever-controversial tech

Despite the accuracy figures cited by the MPS, civil liberties groups consistently campaign against the use of LFR.

One of the UK's loudest anti-LFR campaigners, Big Brother Watch, regularly labels the technology "dystopian" and called the permanent Croydon installations "chilling infrastructure."

Big Brother Watch recently lost a High Court battle in which it represented anti-knife crime campaigner Shaun Thompson, who received a settlement from the Met after LFR technology wrongly flagged him and officers stopped and questioned him.

Thompson claimed he handed officers his passport and bank cards, but they remained unconvinced that the LFR detection was false. He said the technology was tantamount to "stop and search on steroids," referencing the controversial policing tactic.

The group tried to curtail the Met's LFR use by arguing it violated several human rights, but the High Court ultimately ruled in the police's favor. ®