A look inside the facial ID vans now patrolling Peterborough's streets
Police in Peterborough are now in possession of new technology to keep the streets of the city safe.
On Friday (June 19), Cambridgeshire Police brought their facial ID vans to the city centre for the second time.
The Live Facial Recognition (FDR) was active from two vans, on Bridge Street and Long Causeway, and is part of the ongoing deployment of the cutting-edge crime fighting technology in Peterborough.
The technology will not just stop anyone on the street, it has specialised cameras searching a narrow field to identify faces that match up with a database of stored information.
The technology is searching for people known to the police and on this occasion, that was from a list of roughly 560 people.
The variety of reasons the police may wish to speak to people can vary from them being a wanted person, for failing to appear in court, being subject to specific court orders and ensuring compliance to them is being adhered to, to being wanted to speak to somebody in connection with a crime.
In its deployment last month, which took place on a Saturday, more than 34,000 faces were scanned and seven positive identifications were made, leading to two arrests.
The technology deployed on the streets has undergone substantial testing over a number of years and has built in standards.
The cameras compute a percentage match to the biometric information stored on file. A score of 1 would be a 100% match and the police are legally not allowed to stop anyone that produces less than a 0.64 match.
Images that trigger an alert are deleted immediately after use or within 24 hours, while the images and biometric data of individuals who do not trigger an alert will be deleted automatically. Once deleted, these images cannot be retrieved.
Inspector Sam Tucker said: “We had some really good engagement last time we used this. We tried it on a Saturday and now we are trying it on a different day to see if it has any impact.
"We are hoping for some good outcomes, like last time, but if nothing else, we have spoken to a large number of members of the general public and had a really good opportunity to engage with them. People can see police out in the city centre which is really positive in itself.
"Having officers on the street is what we want to see more of. Already, we have been present and therefore able to deal with things that are not linked with the operation and this is really positive.
“The operation itself is really good and we there are a number of other positive by products from it too that has seen us able to tackle some low-level anti-social behaviour incidents and support our business partners.