Brit police watchdog says cops’ use of facial recog risks wrongful arrests

The policing inspectorate says UK police forces must strengthen safeguards against people being wrongly arrested after retrospective facial recognition searches. It found that rules are fragmented and some investigators mistakenly treat potential matches as evidence, risking inappropriate action and public trust in the technology.

HMICFRS says RFR results should be treated as intelligence and checked through further enquiries before enforcement action. It called for a statutory code in the forthcoming Police Reform Bill, noting that some forces lack formal procedures while centralised teams tend to provide more consistent oversight. An arrest following a match is not necessarily wrongful, as officers may need to rule someone out; surveys cited in the report found support for police facial recognition ranging from 53 to 91 per cent, while 4 per cent of officers reported a negative experience.