UK-based security tech firm Facewatch has developed a crime prevention system to alert businesses in Brazil when known criminals enter their premises.
London-based Facewatch, working with Staff Security Brazil, uses facial recognition to match known offenders against their centralized watch lists.
Initially operating in one shopping center prior to a wider roll-out, five serious criminals have been caught in just the first two months of use.
(See brief overview of how Facewatch works in the detection and prevention of low level crime. Courtesy of Facewatch and YouTube.)
Approximately 400,000 faces per month are being captured and compared with images held on watch lists provided by police and businesses.
When the system spots a match, security staff and police are sent alerts within seconds. If there is no match, the captured faces are deleted.
The system ‘learns’ by taking the user feedback to improve over time.
“For BRMalls, Facewatch is a crucial tool to support us in combating criminality,” explained Pampurre head of security for BRMalls.
BRMalls is one of the largest shopping center chains in South America and is one of the first to adopt the Facewatch cloud-based facial recognition system, which has been running live within its flagship shopping mall in Rio de Janeiro since July.
“Having adopted Facewatch in our mall recently, the identification of five criminals already has proved to us how effective it is in supporting our daily operations,” said Security Manager Jesse Barbosa.
Staff Security is preparing for a second phase rollout in three major cities in Brazil this month, including Sao Paulo, with the intention to integrate the facial recognition system into thousands of locations in the future.
(Learn More about online crime reporting platform Facewatch features on popular BBC One series ‘Thief Trackers’. Courtesy of BBC, Facewatch and YouTube)
“Staff Security has already invested over 400,000 GBP in the project and has been working for 12 months to map the infrastructure, train personnel and to gain an understanding of how to make the product work effectively in Brazil,” explained Matheus Paiva, Chief Operations Officer of Staff Security.
“We are now taking on and training new distribution partners and allies across Brazil.”
Staff Security has recently teamed up with TECVOZ, a leading Brazilian camera manufacturer to provide cameras which have been tested with the system and the new technology will be distributed through their network of 550 installers.
What is Facewatch?
Facewatch is a web-based crime-reporting tool that saves your police officers time and effort.
Your police force can use Facewatch to receive low-level crime reports from businesses in your constabulary.
You can quickly and easily view evidence and collaborate with members of the business community to reduce crime and the impact of crime.
Facewatch allows businesses, security services and communities to work together to help your police force optimize time and resource requirements therefore reducing crime.
How does Facewatch help Police?
- Reduces need to visit premises
- Reduces time to collect all the necessary data
- Ability to view CCTV footage of the incident instantly
- Ability to view still imagery of the subject of interest instantly
- Approved witness statements reported and made available online
- Ability to view incident associates combined with primary subject of interest details
- Ability to view multiple incidents in a similar area linked with the same subject of interest on a map
- Keep up to date with incidents happening in your local area
- Ability to link subjects of interest with multiple locations across the country
(Hear what Facewatch users say about the system? Courtesy of Facewatch and YouTube)
How it works
- When creating a report, on behalf of premises within their constabulary, Police users can simply select one of the incident types under the “Non-crime Intel For Police” category, complete the report as normal and upon submission, the report will be submitted as intelligence rather than a Crime.
- Additionally, Police users and Premises Managers will be able to retrospectively edit these incident reports to add additional information when they need to.
- With Police users and businesses contributing intelligence in this way, more information will be shared on the Platform which will lead to more incidents being prevented.
- It also allows the Police to have a more active role with the Premises on the Platform and ensure safer, securer communities.
- This functionality is available in our FWShare App on the iOS and Android App stores and is ideal for reporting while on the move from your mobile phone:
- You can also view your Watchlist(s) and Alerts in FWShare – free to use for anyone with access to Facewatch.
- Your crime recording team receive emails and online crime reports directly to their desktop.
- Witness statements are taken and approved at the scene of the incident and automatically formatted into an MG11 by the system.
- Still images and moving CCTV footage can be attached to the Incident Report.
This removes the need to visit the premises to gather all this information as it is handled by the Facewatch online crime report.
Facewatch is available wherever you have an Internet connection.
You can sign in with your personal user details and access the system from a browser on your desktop or on compatible mobile devices.
Your Police Force can use Facewatch to compare and match subject of interest images, match and associate individuals to incidents, identify gangs, crime patterns and track the progress of on-going investigations.
Facewatch generates crime statistics for easy analysis and benchmarking.
Additionally police users can now view & submit intelligence reports on Facewatch.
