Misuse and incidents

LAPD officers conduct nearly 30,000 facial-recognition searches

Los Angeles Police Department records showed nearly 30,000 facial-recognition searches since late 2009 and access for 330 officers, contradicting earlier public denials and documenting operational use of systems supplied by several vendors.

CURRENT ASSESSMENT · REVISION 1
TOWARD DOOM38confidence 92/100

Why it moved the index

The records establish sustained, large-scale police use of biometric identification with weak public transparency, creating direct surveillance and civil-liberties harms rather than merely hypothetical misuse. The evidence did not verify an exact deployed model version.

AUDIT TRAIL

Assessment history

  1. R1
    Toward 38 · confidence 92

    New evidence-based September 2020 operational-surveillance disclosure absent from the durable corpus.

    11 Aug 2026