Commissioner Sir Mark Rowley said Live Facial Recognition will only be used if there is an “intelligence basis to do so”
The Metropolitan Police has defended its decision not to use Live Facial Recognition (LFR) technology at a Tommy Robinson-led rally only weeks after deploying it at Notting Hill Carnival.
Commissioner Sir Mark Rowley said LFR had not been used at any protest in London so far, including the Unite the Kingdom (UTK) rally, which saw 24 arrests for offences including affray, violent disorder, assaults and criminal damage. The event – attended by an estimated 150,000 people – also saw 26 officers injured on the day, including four who were seriously hurt.
Last month, the Met were forced to defend their use of LFR at the 2025 Notting Hill Carnival after civil liberty and anti-racism groups called on them to scrap it. And in light of it not being used at the rally organised by the far right, the force has been pressed toexplain itself again.
But Sir Mark said LFR, which has been used by the force to make over 1,000 arrests since last January, is only deployed where there is an “intelligence basis to do so”.
“Look at the number of stabbings, the two murders, and everything that went on at Carnival last year, and the tragic history of violence,” he told the London Policing Board earlier today (Tuesday, September 16).
“Carnival is an event which has hundreds of thousands of people turn up to celebrate culture. But sadly, hundreds of people turn up set on criminality. And there’s a pattern of that, and it turns to violence. And that puts the hundreds of thousand of good people at risk.
“That intelligence case has been built up over multiple years. There are dangerous people who are going to undermine this event for the good majority, and that needs tackling. That’s a very clear intelligence basis to deploy it.”
Some 61 arrests were made at Notting Hill Carnival this year after LFR identified around 100 “people of interest”, the Met has said.
Deputy Assistant Commissioner Matt Ward, the policing commander for the festival, added: “Live Facial Recognition proved particularly successful, with the technology helping officers to identify people of interest over two days who, without it, would likely have been able to go unnoticed in the busy crowds.”
The force said the use of LFR helped lead to a reduction in serious violence. In contrast, Sir Mark claimed that the previous protest held by the organisers of the UTK rally “didn’t have any trouble of any significance” so there was no grounds to deploy LFR.
The Met is “cautious” about rolling it out unnecessarily at protests due to concerns over curbing “freedom of speech and the rights expressed under the Human Rights Act”, he added.
“ We have to act without fear or favour in the middle,” he told the Policing Board. “Now, as I said earlier, it is not for us to pass an ethical judgment on protesters at any protest. And we’ve had many different flavours and types of protests in London over the last few years. We will focus on illegality, not the ethics of it.
“I don’t rule out [using LFR] at a protest where there is lot of intelligence about serious violence. We have to be even more careful about using it at a protest because of what may be sensed about it having a chilling effect.”
Last month the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) said the technology should only be used in a necessary and proportionate way, and argued that “the Metropolitan Police’s current policy falls short of this standard”.
The Met deployed 1,000 officers to police the UTK rally on Saturday and drafted in an extra 500 from other forces including Leicestershire, Nottinghamshire, and Devon and Cornwall.
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