A 23-year old man was stabbed in Croydon during a police deployment of live facial recognition surveillance technology. This severe incident sparked criticism from privacy and civil liberties group Big Brother Watch. The group’s advocacy manager Mark Johnson said:
“This heinous stabbing during a live facial recognition deployment demonstrates that this mass surveillance tech is wholly ineffective in fighting crime. Whilst officers were stood around by cameras waiting for criminals to come to them, this stabbing took place just meters away down the street whilst the suspect fled the scene.
“Members of the public will rightly ask whether this stabbing would have happened had the police officers been fulfilling their traditional role of actively patrolling the area rather than standing by cameras. The Met has serious questions to answer about this.”
While the group commended police officers at the scene for halting the deployment and acting as first respondents, they slammed the use of live facial recognition calling it “an extremely unhelpful distraction in British policing”.
MyLondon – Croydon stabbing 100m from facial recognition van ‘shows it’s not a deterrent’