Police to use facial recognition at Notting Hill Carnival in knife crime crackdown

Punters attending the annual festival in west London will be scanned against images of knife offenders, rapists, thieves and people suspected of committing violent crime.

Police say this will improve safety at Europe's largest street festival, which attracts up to two million people every year.

The force is working to stave off violent crime, which has gripped the August Bank Holiday weekend event in recent years.

Last year, eight people were stabbed across the three days, with one person dying from their injuries. Another person was beaten and kicked to death.

Mobile live facial recognition (LFR) cameras will be erected within three miles of the parade route to crackdown on the violence.

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Senior officers say the move will make the festival safer. However, it has also sparked backlash from organisers and has those raising concerns over breaches of civil liberty.

Campaigners argue the technology could be less accurate when scanning faces of people from ethnic minorities.

While testing by the National Physical Laboratory found that there was no “statistically significant bias related to gender or race”, false positives can still be reported.

An additional £1m will go towards bolstering security for the event, with around 7,000 officers expected to be deployed. Police were warned last week of a potential disaster at the event sparked by mass crushing.

Knife arches and prevention orders will been imposed to keep known offenders away.

LFR was rolled out in a trial at the carnival in 2016 and 2017 but was abandoned after it falsely flagged 102 people as potential suspects.

Lindsey Chiswick, national lead on facial recognition tech for the Metropolitan police, told the Daily Mail: “I can understand why there may be some concern. It was different technology back then. The accuracy rate was low.”

LFR led to more than 1,000 arrests in London since last year, the Met said earlier this week.

The carnival’s chair, Ian Comfort, wrote to the culture secretary earlier this year to request public funds to address “critical public safety concerns.”

Mr Comfort said that public money was “essential to safeguarding the future and public safety of this iconic event.”

“Limited resourcing has restricted the police service’s ability to respond to growing operational pressures,” Comfort said in the letter.

He said increased investment in stewarding and crowd management was “now essential to allow the police to focus on their primary role of crime prevention and public protection”.

In April, the Met's assistant commissioner for frontline policing, Matt Twist, raised concerns over Carnival becoming a ‘mass casualty event’.

He said "In addition to frequent monitoring of nine locations we know are challenging, we [had] to step in a number of times in order to reduce the crowd density in order to save life."

He said crowd density at Carnival was “probably the most concerning part” for those responsible for ensuring safety at the event.

Jonathan Hinder, a former police inspector, posted online that he thinks the carnival should take place in Hyde Park, be ticketed and that would result in ‘no stabbings’.

Matthew Phillip, the chief executive of Notting Hill Carnival Ltd, has said the event is “not the cause” of knife crime, but “can be a part of the solution”, after a number of deaths in recent years.

“We can’t ignore the impact of knife crime on our event.

“The tragic deaths of Takayo Nembhard and Cher Maximen broke the hearts of their friends and families as well as our communities and, three years on, the family and friends of Takayo still don’t have justice," he said.

Cher Maximen was killed in front of her three-year-old daughter, and chef Mussie Imnetu was repeatedly punched and kicked during an altercation at the event.