Fresh face recognition programs, including a "smart vehicle" fitted with face recognition and real-time face recognition cameras, have been repeatedly revealed by the Los Angeles Police Department, yet the agency claimed to have "no documents sensitive" to our document request.
Since 2009, the Los Angeles Police Department has used facial recognition software almost 30,000 times, with hundreds of officers running photographs of criminals against a vast database of mug shots captured by law enforcement from surveillance cameras and other outlets. Are the police using this technology on traffic cameras in Los Angeles?
"It is no secret" that the LAPD uses facial recognition, that he personally testified to that fact before the Police Commission a few years back, and that the more recent denials, including two after last year, one to The Times, were just errors, LAPD assistant chief Horace Frank said.
LAPD spokesman Josh Rubenstein told the paper that the app was used to help classify suspects in crimes without witnesses, gang crimes where witnesses are reluctant to come forward, and by a multi-law enforcement agency task force investigating arsons, burglaries, and other crimes that took place during summer demonstrations over police shootings.
The software was used to equate the geographic database with photographs from crime scenes, witnesses, and surveillance cameras. Rubenstein said the LAPD also doesn't use the program to search crowds or in any live-streaming capacity. He said the program had access to 330 LAPD staff.
A three-year ban on the use of facial recognition systems in police body cameras has been implemented by California. Similar moves in New Hampshire and Oregon were followed by the prohibition. San Francisco and Oakland banned police and other city agencies last year from using any facial recognition. In the Boston suburb of Somerville, Massachusetts, it has also been banned.
Has facial recognition video technology been using on the hundreds of automatic license plate reader traffic cameras throughout the city?
