Thames Valley Police says its latest live facial recognition deployment in Slough scanned 14,795 faces, generated four alerts and produced three arrests or other recorded disposals. The force has now published results from the July 23 operation that it announced earlier in the month.
The Slough watchlist contained 3,389 records. Police list three of the four alerts as resulting in an arrest or other disposal, while the published table does not record a comparable outcome for the remaining alert.
The table records arrests and disposals as immediate operational outcomes rather than convictions or final judicial results. It lists no enforcement outcome for the fourth alert.
The deployment was the fourth listed Slough operation of 2026. The planned event followed earlier results that included six alerts and two arrests or other disposals from 22,819 faces scanned in May.
Thames Valley Police has also used the technology in Oxfordshire. A May 29 deployment in Bicester scanned 18,481 faces against a watchlist of 4,342 records, producing three alerts and three arrests. An Oxford operation ten days earlier scanned 44,448 faces against 4,354 records without producing an alert.
Together, the Bicester and Oxford deployments scanned 62,929 faces. Bicester produced three alerts, while Oxford produced none despite processing more than twice as many faces. Alert totals depend on whether people on a watchlist pass the cameras and produce a system match.
The force uses mobile live facial recognition as part of a wider national expansion. The UK government is funding 40 additional facial recognition vans through a £115 million policing package, while questions about watchlist governance and the absence of a dedicated statutory framework remain under debate.
Thames Valley Police publishes watchlist sizes, faces processed, alerts and arrests or disposals for each operation. The same measures are reported across deployments in Slough, Bicester and Oxford.
The force’s 2026 deployment list now covers repeated operations in Slough as well as Bicester and Oxford. The July event added another 14,795 scans and four alerts to those operational records.
Sources: Thames Valley Police
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By Ali Nassar-Smith
