Chatham Facial Recognition: 34,279 Faces, 18 Arrests

Kent Police parked two facial recognition camera vans in Chatham town centre on Friday 11 and Saturday 12 September and made 18 arrests over the two days. The force has now published the operation’s own numbers, and they show what the press release did not: the cameras looked at 34,279 faces to produce 27 alerts.

Eleven of the 18 arrests came directly from someone being identified by a camera (Kent Police). The other seven were made by officers patrolling the area at the same time.

What the two days actually produced

Kent Police publishes a record of each Live Facial Recognition deployment, listing faces seen, alerts, arrests and errors. Both Chatham days are on it (Kent Police, previous LFR locations and dates):

Every figure the force gave the media reconciles with that record. The 27 alerts are 21 plus 6. The 11 camera-driven arrests are 9 plus 2. The “almost 200 members of the public” officers spoke to are 79 plus 120, which is 199.

Two numbers stand out. The busier day produced fewer alerts. Saturday’s cameras saw 4,177 more faces than Friday’s and generated a quarter as many hits, which is what you would expect if the people on the watchlist were found on day one. And 16 of the 27 alerts ended in something other than an arrest, recorded as “other disposals”.

Who was arrested, in the force’s words

Kent Police has not named anyone, and no court has dealt with any of these arrests. The force describes those held as including:

• people wanted for violence and theft
• sex offenders suspected of breaching court conditions
• one man detained after a knuckle duster was seized

Officers also checked several registered sex offenders to make sure they were complying with restrictions in their Sexual Harm Prevention Orders. An arrest is not a conviction, and we will not be reporting these cases further unless and until charges are made public by the force.

The force’s accuracy claim

Medway’s District Commander, Ch Insp Gary Woodward, said the cameras “generated 27 alerts with those who had been identified being checked by officers on the street. Every alert was shown to be accurate. Members of the public who were not one of those on the specific list of people we were seeking, were not matched when they walked past the cameras. Their image was immediately and automatically deleted.”

The published record backs that up on its own terms: nought incorrect alerts and nought incorrect interventions across both days, an incorrect alert rate of 0%.

It is worth being precise about what that does and does not mean. The figure counts alerts the system raised and officers then found to be wrong. It does not count anybody on the watchlist who walked past the vans and was missed.

Chatham is the only place on Kent’s published list

Kent Police’s transparency page carries two entries, and both are Chatham. There is no record of an earlier deployment anywhere else in the county, and no planned deployment is listed for anywhere at the time of writing, although the force says details of planned use will be published there in advance.

The force also says signs are displayed wherever the technology is in use, that officers are on hand to answer questions, and that members of the public may choose not to enter an area where it is running, which by itself is not a reason for police to stop them (Kent Police, Live Facial Recognition). Images of people not on the watchlist are deleted immediately. Data linked to an alert is deleted no later than 24 hours after the operation ends, and CCTV from the operation may be kept for up to 31 days.

As part of joint working arrangements, Kent Police may use Essex Police vans and equipment for these operations.

Why Chatham, and what the crime figures show

The deployment supported “Clear, Hold, Build”, the campaign the force runs to push crime down in a defined area and keep it down. Chatham town centre is a reasonable place to start.

Kent Police divides Medway into 24 neighbourhood areas. We pulled the street-level crime record for each of them from police.uk, the Home Office’s open data service, for July 2026, the most recent month published. Chatham Central and Brompton records more crime than any other neighbourhood in Medway, and it is not close:

Within the Chatham Central and Brompton total, 144 were violent crime, 89 were anti-social behaviour and 27 were shoplifting. That is the standing picture the vans were sent into. It is also worth noting that these are crimes recorded by the police, so a fortnight of intensive town-centre patrolling tends to push the number up rather than down before it pushes it down.

What it means for you

• If you shop or work in Chatham town centre, you may have been one of the 34,279. If you were not on the watchlist, Kent Police says your image was deleted immediately and never entered a police database.
• Signs should tell you when the vans are there. If you see them and want to know what is happening, the force says officers on site will answer questions. On these two days 199 people did exactly that.
• Future deployments are supposed to be published in advance on the force’s LFR page, which is the one to watch rather than waiting for a press release.
• If you think you were wrongly stopped, the record for both Chatham days shows nought incorrect interventions, so any complaint would be the first. Kent Police takes complaints through its own contact routes.
• Heading into town? Our parking in Medway guide has the Chatham car parks and what they cost.

Sources

• Kent Police, Multiple arrests through Live Facial Recognition, Chatham, published 15:18 on 14 September 2026
• Kent Police, previous live facial recognition locations and dates, the force’s published record for 11 and 12 September 2026
• Kent Police, Live Facial Recognition, the force’s policy, safeguards and retention periods
• police.uk street-level crime data for July 2026, retrieved for each of Kent Police’s 24 Medway neighbourhood boundaries on 16 September 2026