Tampa dumps facial recognition
Sep 3, 2003 12:00 PM
Tampa (Fla.) police have scrapped a facial recognition CCTV camera system that scanned city streets for criminals, citing its failure over two years to recognize anyone wanted by authorities.
The system was intended to recognize the facial characteristics of felons, sexual predators and runaway children by matching passers-by in Ybor City with a database of 30,000 mug shots.
"It's just proven not to have any benefit to us,'' Capt. Bob Guidara, a department spokesman, told The Associated Press.
The cameras have led only to arrests for such crimes as drug deals.
Tampa was the first city in the United States to install such a system, and only one facial recognition-based system is left in the U.S., in Virginia Beach, Va. (The Virginia system was profiled in the May issue of GOVERNMENT SECURITY -- follow this link to read it:
govtsecurity.securitysolutions.com/ar/security_faces_crowd/index.htm
According to Virginia Beach police chief Greg Mullen, the city does not plan to scrap its program, even though the three-camera system has never recognized anyone wanted by authorities.
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