The Brea Police Department will soon be able to use facial recognition software to identify potential suspects during investigations.
On Tuesday, Brea City Council voted unanimously with no discussion to enter into an agreement with the Integrated Law and Justice Agency for Orange County (ILJAOC).
This agreement will also give Brea PD access to a system able to analyze faces from surveillance camera footage, a photo supplied from a victim or witness and more.
It comes as there’s growing concerns about increased police surveillance throughout Orange County, with some residents criticizing such systems.
[Read: OC Cities Look to Beef Up Surveillance Amid Privacy Concerns]
Brea is the 13th law enforcement agency in Orange County to enter into this agreement.
“The PD regularly receives Ring video, photos, and CCTV footage from victims and witnesses related to crimes. Many of these have clear images of the suspect, but we still don’t know who they are,” wrote Professional Standards Lieutenant Chris Haddad in an email to Voice of OC.
“This could give the investigator an additional lead to investigate if the system provides a potential match,” he wrote.
The system works by analyzing images submitted by an authorized investigator. The software then creates a mathematical representation of facial characteristics seen in the photos and matches them with photographs in a jail booking database.
The software produces candidate matches that a trained human investigator must evaluate using other evidence.
Haddad explained how the system will only compare photos of unknown persons against booking photos of known people.
“This is simply a tool that may create leads if the police department has a clear image of a suspect and that suspect has been booked into county jail at some point and has a booking photo in the system,” he wrote.
According to the system’s policy, any authorized user of the system will need to log each access to it. Every participating agency will need to maintain these logs and make them available to the Orange County Sheriff’s Department Crime Laboratory for quality control and random audits.
These logs need to include information such as the date and time of access, case number, valid law enforcement purpose, number of potential candidate images the system provided, the images supplied to the system, and more.
No participating agency, including Brea PD, is allowed to keep any database to conduct facial recognition services and is only allowed to use the database kept by ILJAOC to run searches.
As of now, there is no date as to when the system will be implemented, as Brea police officers will need to be trained in the system before the facial recognition software is put in place.
City council also voted unanimously to accept the project of Brea’s new Integrated Crime Center as complete.
The Integrated Crime Center is a system that uses advanced technology such as drones as first responders, license plate readers, and traffic signal cameras to provide first responders with critical information aiding in coming up with leads, monitoring special events and managing traffic.
Brea’s new facial recognition system will not be stored in the center. It will instead be stored in the Orange County Sheriff’s crime lab where it will be administered by the county.
Police Lieutenant Tony Barbosa calls Brea’s crime center a “game changer for law enforcement,” stating that the system could change traffic flow within the city of Brea, influence the time the city sets for traffic signals and more.
“There’s a lot of things that the Integrated Crime Center might have an impact on,” Barbosa said in an interview with Voice of OC.
“It’s such a new thing for us here in the city that we don’t know what its capabilities will be, and it could be endless as technology grows.”
Sara Leon is a Voice of OC intern from Cal State Fullerton. You can reach her at sleon7903@gmail.com.
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