Deputies Can Now Point, Click, Arrest
Pinellas County, Fla., spent about $250,000 last year to fit 50 cruisers with face recognition technology that helps officers identify suspects when an identification is in question. By taking a digital picture of a suspect, a photo can be compared against a database of thousands of stored digital images of people who have previously been arrested.
The technology has played a key role in 45 arrests since September of last year. Pinellas sheriff’s Lt. Jim Main says another 50 people have been identified with the technology.
The system’s use at the Pinellas County Criminal Justice Center has been a focus of criticism, with critics arguing that it constitutes privacy infringement and has also generated false positives on a few occasions.
Abstracted by the National Law Enforcement and Corrections Technology Center(NLECTC) from the St. Petersburg Times (FL) (05/10/05) P. 1B; Krueger, Curtis .