On Wednesday, 19 February, the Met Police deployed live facial recognition technology to crime hotspots in Kingston.

Retrospective Facial Recognition (RFR) is used by the Metropolitan Police Service (MPS) as an after-the-event capability to help officers establish who a person is or whether their image matches against other images held by policing in order to help progress investigations and operations.

It helps officers work more efficiently and effectively to keep Londoners safe.

Live Facial Recognition (LFR) cameras are focused on a specific area; when people pass through that area their images are streamed directly to the Live Facial Recognition system and compared to a watchlist.