A police department collected 65,000 face scans — but the system hasn’t been connected to a single arrest
Police in San Diego have been using facial recognition for seven years, and over 65,000 face scans have been collected by law enforcement in San Diego county in the past three years alone. But San Diego Police Department’s use of facial-recognition technology has not been connected to a single arrest, a police spokesperson told Fast Company.
When reached for comment by Business Insider, a San Diego Police Department spokesperson said that SDPD officers were not able to identify any cases in which facial recognition led to an arrest, but added that it’s possible such an arrest was made in the past that the department wasn’t able to immediately identify.
San Diego is one of many major cities across the US to embrace facial recognition. While the tool has been heavily hyped for its potential to track people and identify possible suspects, Fast Company’s findings call the effectiveness of facial recognition into question.
