An arrest in connection with an attempted murder investigation was made during a Live Facial Recognition deployment in Southend, police reveal.

Essex Police say they have made seven more arrests thanks to its Live Facial Recognition technology during deployments in Southend this month.

The vans were deployed in the High Street five times between October 13 and 21 as part of the force's response to incidents of disorder in the city.

The arrests included in connection with investigations into attempted murder, domestic violence, assault, drug supply and shoplifting.

It means since the first deployment of the technology at the Clacton Airshow, the Live Facial Recognition vans have led to 25 arrests.

Chief Insp Dave Browning, district commander for Southend, said: “This was a really successful deployment and led to suspects wanted in connection to serious offences being brought into custody.

“Live Facial Recognition has proved a valuable tool at locating and arresting suspects and is proving to be a good investment in our communities.

“And our use of it is part of our commitment here in Southend to stamp out serious violence and deal with those responsible.

“There have so far been no incorrect alerts in the 17 deployments we’ve had to date which also shows the technology is working really well.”

Live Facial Recognition uses a live camera feed to scan faces in a crowd and compare them to a watch list of people of interest.

The system uses advanced algorithms to identify faces and generate alerts for possible matches.

Chief Insp Browning added: “Live Facial Recognition is targeted to focus on specific people we are trying to locate.

“The technology utilises CCTV camera feeds to Live Facial Recognition software to scan faces against a predetermined database or ‘watch list’ of people of interest. 

“The scanning of an image takes less than a second. The data/image of those not on the watchlist is automatically and immediately deleted and not stored.

“When there is a positive match, appropriate action will be taken by officers on the ground to confirm ID and then assess what the next action is to be taken.”