As each new year brings with it an ever rising tide of technological advancement, so this year will no doubt see more UK Police Forces following the lead of South Wales and Gwent in utilising “Operator Initiated Facial Recognition” (OIFR) mobile apps to identify suspects or missing persons, as was announced by South Wales Police shortly before Christmas.
The image taken of a person on an Officer’s mobile phone using OIFR is compared against the custody image database and/or the missing person database, and so only people who have previously been held in Police custody, or who have been officially reported as missing by their family would be capable of being identified in this way. It is promised that the photographs taken on OIFR apps will not themselves be retained, and are subject to automatic deletion after use.
Officers do not need consent to use OIFR on a person, but are certainly required to explore other less- intrusive lines of enquiry when seeking to ID someone, and must have a genuine policing purpose and reasonable grounds for their use of the device. Force cannot be used in order to take an OIFR photograph; but bear in mind that a refusal to co-operate with this particular kind of ‘photoshoot’ could be used by an Officer as a basis for arrest, as ascertaining a person’s name and address is one of the PACE Code G necessity criteria.
The use of such devices, further curtailing personal privacy in the interests of State surveillance, must be balanced, as acknowledged by the Assistant Chief Constable Nick McLain of Gwent Police, by “human decision making and oversight, ensuring that it is used lawfully, ethically and in the public interest”. Let us hope that is a mission statement which is put into practice on our streets, and not merely confined to power- point presentations.
Whilst the introduction of this technology could reduce the number of ‘mistaken identity’ arrests going forward, it is certainly not going to eliminate them all. I can think of plenty of examples from my own case work where the availability of a “facial recognition” app would not have made any difference because of a Police propensity to arrest first, ask questions later – even when the existing law as to necessity of arrest should have led Officers to pursue non- arrest investigative routes, thereby saving an innocent person from the physical – but above all mental – trauma of handcuffing and detention.
For example, I have recently settled a £17,500 claim for damages on behalf of a client who was ‘identified’ as a criminal suspect from a considerable distance (around 30 metres) by a group of officers, essentially only on the basis of generic/ racial similarities, and was then confronted by Officers brandishing a very different piece of the modern Police tool kit – not OIFR but TASER. I doubt that the gung-ho Officers who menaced my client in this fashion and forced him onto the ground before attempting to verify his identity would have taken a more delicate approach even had it been available to them; or, in other words, I strongly suspect that many Police Officers will continue to rush in where angels with facial recognition apps might fear to tread.
You can read here some of my previous blogs and case reports dealing with the many different types of ‘mistaken identity’ arrests which have afflicted my clients –
- An arrest in which the images of the suspect relied upon were blurry/unreliable leading to misidentification of an innocent man.
- A case in which there was no image of the suspect, and my client was arrested simply on the basis of his having the same first (very common) name as the suspect.
- A case involving twin brothers.
- A man subjected to multiple wrongful arrests after his Police National Computer (PNC) record was catastrophically associated with that of a career criminal.
- An overweight man in his 60s arrested at his home despite the fact that the Police were in possession of a clear CCTV image of the suspect who was of slim build and approximately 30 years younger.
- My client who was mistaken by Officers, on the basis of a CCTV still, for the ‘Brighton Cat Killer’.
- One of the very many mistaken identity arrest which occur at airport gates despite the Police already having available to them, but failing to use, easily portable ID verification technology in the form of finger print machines and what we should perhaps term ‘plain’ common sense.
So, by all means let us embrace the new technology, which I believe will do some good in a certain number of cases, but let us not assume that it is a panacea any more than the introduction of Police body cameras or the increased roll out of taser weapons proved to be – and let us be always on guard as to its limitations and potentials for misuse.
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