UK Metropolitan Police Commissioner Sir Mark Rowley has set out an ambitious next phase in the use of technology to tackle crime and stay ahead of offenders.
The move centres on a major rollout of drone operations across London, the roll out of static live facial recognition cameras and increased use of AI to analyse video evidence in criminal investigations.
The announcements come in a landmark speech which sets out how technology and data exploitation could enable policing to make a transformative leap. The Commissioner will warn that without tackling the barriers to progress we will be outpaced by criminals.
In October last year, the Met launched a pilot that saw drones deployed in real time to incidents in Islington, providing live information and intelligence, tracking suspects and helping officers make faster, safer decisions.
Eight months later, the Met now operates three drone sites across London, with nine drones deploying to around 200 incidents every week. Response times now average below two minutes, with drones increasingly the first resource on scene.
But the Met cannot stand still, the Commissioner will say.
He will set out the next mission: an ambition that by this time next year, the Met will have drone coverage in every London borough. Alongside this, the Met will work with the blue light services to build a city-wide emergency services drone network.
Commissioner Sir Mark Rowley said:
“This is a turning point for policing in London. Today we are setting out how we will significantly step up our use of technology to fundamentally change how we protect the public.
“Drones are already transforming how we respond to incidents – getting visuals from the scene in minutes, giving officers critical intelligence and helping us act faster and more safely. Now we are scaling that capability across London and working with partners to create a truly integrated, city-wide drone network.
“We’re also rolling out live facial recognition with static cameras in areas like the West End, building on the success we have already seen in Croydon where it is driving arrests and cutting crime. And we are using AI powered video analytics to unlock the vast amounts of CCTV footage captured across London, helping our investigators find evidence faster and act earlier.
“But this is about more than individual tools. Criminals are already using technology to become more organised, more connected and harder to catch. Right now, policing is trying to keep up using systems that are too slow and too restrictive. If that does not change, we won’t succeed.”
Recent polling suggests that 87 per cent of Londoners support the use of drones to respond to 999 calls to capture live evidence or information from a crime scene. The polling also shows that 81 per cent of Londoners also support the police adopting new technology.
The new network will include coordinated airspace management, shared launch sites, connectivity and control systems, allowing blue light services across London to respond more quickly and operate more efficiently and collaboratively while saving emergency service time on incidents that do not require multiple physical responses. This joint approach will save all services money.
Alongside this, the Commissioner will also confirm a major rollout of live facial recognition (LFR), which remains a key tool in identifying and apprehending offenders.
Since the start of 2024, LFR has helped officers locate and arrest more than 2,000 dangerous offenders, including individuals wanted for rape, child abuse and other serious crimes. Public confidence remains strong, with around 80 per cent of Londoners supporting its use.
Last year, static LFR cameras were trialled in Croydon, resulting in hundreds of arrests and a 10.5 per cent reduction in crime, including retail offences, antisocial behaviour and violence against women and girls.
The speech will also highlight the growing role of AI in analysing video evidence. With around one million CCTV cameras across London, investigators are faced with an unprecedented volume of footage.
The Met is now using AI to significantly accelerate this process. The technology can scan and interpret footage to identify people, vehicles and key events, turning video into actionable evidence and intelligence. This enables investigators to move more quickly, identify lines of enquiry and reduce the risk of missed evidence.
Early use in serious crime investigations has already delivered results. Analysis across 23 major cases, including homicide investigations, covering more than 16,000 hours of CCTV, has reduced review time by the equivalent of 454 officer days, freeing up resources and enabling faster progress in investigations.
The Commissioner will use the speech to call for urgent national reform, warning that the current system is preventing policing from keeping pace with the pace of technological change.
He will argue that policing should not be expected to wait for new legislation every time technology advances. While some campaigners call for a separate legal framework for each new capability, that approach is simply not viable in a fast-moving technological landscape. Instead, he will make the case for clear, consistent principles governing the use of technology, underpinned by strong oversight, accountability and public transparency.
The speech will also highlight a deeper, long-standing issue. For decades, political debate has focused heavily on police officer numbers, with far less attention given to whether policing has the tools it needs to do the job effectively.
The result has been a structural imbalance. Police officer pay budgets have been protected, while technology and infrastructure budgets has been repeatedly cut.
Meanwhile, other parts of the public sector have been allowed to sustain and prioritise investment in digital capability. At the upper end, government agencies are spending more than £13,000 per person on technology and data.
By contrast, the Met is able to invest around £6,000 per person, less than half that level.
The Commissioner will warn that this gap matters. Without the right tools, policing cannot operate at the speed, scale or precision the modern threat demands. And unless that changes, the gap between policing and those it seeks to protect against will continue to widen.
London’s Deputy Mayor for Policing and Crime, Kaya Comer-Schwartz, said:
“In London, the Met are leading the way in using the latest technology, including E-bikes, drones and Live Facial Recognition, to arrest dangerous criminals and tackle and prevent violence in the capital.
“We are proud to have backed the Met with record funding for the very latest technology to drive efficiencies and improve the performance and accountability of the police. This includes the largest roll-out of body worn video in the country, new IT platforms to significantly boost the police response to shoplifting offences and prosecutions, and a squadron of new e-bikes to tackle mobile phone theft, which is down by 14,000 in the past year.
“It is vital that the Met is both ready and able to meet the challenges of modern policing, but it’s also right that checks and balances are in place. Together with the London Policing Board, the Mayor and I will continue to support and challenge the Met to be open, transparent and accountable around the use of any new technology as we continue to build a safer London for everyone.”
The original announcement can be found here.
The speech was delivered in partnership with Police Foundation. The transcript can be found in full below:
Good morning,
Let me be direct at the outset. We are here today because of London’s criminals. This event is funded by the profits we have taken from them and reinvested back into policing.
Learning from Policing’s Past
Let me take you somewhere slightly unexpected. Long before algorithms or artificial intelligence, 19th century Scotland Yard was searching for scientific advantage, in an era shaped by scientists like Darwin, Lister, Maxwell and Faraday.
Alongside genuine innovation, policing experimented with ideas like death masks. These are plaster casts taken from the skulls of executed criminals, based on a belief in phrenology – the flawed idea that criminality could be read from the shape of the skull.
That thinking was soon abandoned in favour of something far more powerful. The invention of fingerprint technology.
Like many innovations, fingerprints were controversial and caused the public to worry. That pattern continued when we introduced body worn video across the Met, it faced strong criticism. Yet today, it is essential to improving transparency, strengthening trust and protecting both officers and the public.
New technology often meets resistance, but when it is used responsibly and proves its worth, it becomes indispensable.
That is the lesson from nearly 200 years of policing.
The Case for Change
Policing today will fail if it is not allowed to keep pace with criminals through technology. That is not a prediction for the distant future. It is a present reality.
Crime is evolving at speed. Criminals are organised, networked and digital. They are using smarter, faster and more connected tools than ever before.
Criminals don’t have to play by any rules. They do not care about protecting your data, they actively seek to exploit it. They are not constrained by governance, or procurement rules.
So today I’ll reflect on how we regain and retain the advantage from the criminals. It’ll also reflect on the barriers to progress, and the opportunities we must seize to take the transformative leap.
The changing nature of crime
Organised crime groups are exploiting social media and e-commerce platforms to target victims, they’re operating on the dark web, and using encrypted communications to stay beyond the reach of law enforcement. They are also rapidly adopting technologies, using AI to generate deepfakes for fraud, identity theft and exploitation, and using blockchain to conceal and launder illicit funds.
Tech is now driving crime not enabling it. Cybercriminals are using AI to scale up their operations, target more victims and industrialise their activity.
A growing underground market now offers dark web versions of AI tools, designed specifically for cybercrime. For a relatively low cost, criminals can access tools that help them design, refine and automate attacks at scale.
Rising public expectations of a modern service
While we are lagging behind, the private sector is using sophisticated data and technology to anticipate needs and protect customers in real time. The public expects this from the police.
For example, police officers often still need to physically attend a location to obtain CCTV footage.
This can involve slow, manual processes and outdated systems such as including the use of CDs, there are estimated to be around one million CCTV cameras across London. This represents an unprecedented opportunity if we can automate and digitalise that process.
Infrastructure Isn’t Enough
There is also probably another honest reflection for us as an organisation.
Nearly all our recent investment in technology has been focused on large-scale infrastructure, ensuring we can meet our core responsibilities of responding to calls and tackling crime. While necessary, this has constrained our ability to innovate.
Before I became Commissioner, the Met was placed into special measures, in part due to two high-risk IT programmes intended to replace outdated legacy systems. We have since implemented Connect, our crime recording, investigation and custody system, a major transformation that now underpins how we manage cases and share information across millions of records.
Alongside this, we are close to delivering a new Command and Control system to handle 999 and 101 calls and direct officers on the ground, replacing technology that dates back decades and has its roots in Heathrow Terminals 1 baggage handling in the late 1960s.
Our approach
I want to set out our approach as we build on these foundations. First, I will talk about how we are already using technology to regain the advantage. Second, I will reflect on how we can better exploit the data that policing holds, and third, how technology can build trust and confidence.
Taking each in turn
One: Embracing new technologies
Let me show you what is possible when we do act.
AI Video Analytics
Take AI video analytics for example. Instead of officers manually reviewing hours of footage, technology can now scan, interpret and analyse video at speed, identifying people, vehicles and key events. Turning that footage into usable evidence.
We are already seeing the impact. In early use across 23 major investigations, with more than 16,000 hours of CCTV. Video analytics reduced review time by 454 officer days and that was just in 23 investigations
That is not just efficiency. That is officers freed up to investigate, to protect victims and to prevent further harm.
Drones
We are seeing the same transformation with drones.
Overwhelmingly, 85 per cent of Londoners support the police use of drones.
With all of our tech, we have deliberately been careful and run small pilots to test see what works and what does not, to inform our plans.
In October last year, we launched a trial with two drones – that has now grown to nine.
Drone deployments are growing, deploying to around 200 incidents a week. Response times are around two minutes, compared to the nine minute average response time for our response officers.
And so in many cases, drones now arrive first. Providing live intelligence. Tracking suspects. Supporting officers before they reach the scene .scene.
We are seeing them peruse offenders, locate missing people and reduce risk in real time.
But this is only the start. We cannot stand still. So today I am announcing the expansion of our drone programme.
It is our ambition that by this time next year, the Met will have drone coverage in every London borough.
But keeping the public safe in London is a team effort. We know our blue light partners are also looking at drone capability and there are some good examples of drones being used in London in many different types of emergencies. We intend to work with London’s blue light services such as the London Fire Brigade to build a London-wide emergency services drone network, ideally built on shared infrastructure that covers the whole city.
This should not just mean sharing drones. It should mean sharing the underlying infrastructure that makes them effective, the airspace management, the launch sites, the connectivity, the data and control systems. Our aim should be a single, secure, coordinated infrastructure that allows police, fire and ambulance services to operate seamlessly as we protect the public.
This is about efficiency. It is about resilience. And most importantly, it is about public safety. Because when every service can operate from a shared, integrated network, we reduce duplication, we save time, save money, and we get to incidents faster.
LFR – Live Facial Recognition
Perhaps the clearest example of what new technology can do is live facial recognition. LFR as we call it.
It really works.
We have been using LFR vans successfully for several years, and have now tested static cameras on existing street infrastructure. These are only activated during deployments, when officers are present and engaging with the public.
Since 2024, LFR operations have contributed to more than 2,000 arrests. One in three registered sex offenders stopped were breaching their conditions, breaches we were not previously detecting. And LFR alerts are nearly three times more likely to lead to an arrest compared to a conventional stop and search
It is not just more effective, it is more fair. Around 80 per cent of Londoners support its use.
And so, today I am announcing that we are rolling out static LFR making it mainstream in central London.
These cameras will be able to be moved between the highest crime hotspots. Next year our intention is to continue the rollout across London.
Now onto the second part of our approach. – that is about exploiting the data that we already holds
Two: Data Integration and Exploitation – Unlocking Precision, Accelerating Investigations
We need to properly integrate data across policing, to unlock the value of what we already hold. Because right now, too much information remains disconnected.
And in policing, missed connections mean missed opportunities to protect the public.
For example after every Domestic Homicide Review or Child Safeguarding Practice Review, the same conclusion is reached: agencies did not join up the information they already held.
To give you a sense of scale, we are an organisation of 45,000 officers and staff, every one of them a creator and consumer of data.
We have over 2,200 datasets across more than 600 systems
We’ve got 3.4 million body worn video recordings downloaded in the last 12 months
And we are making 250,000 forensic submissions in a single year
Can you imagine if we could connect all of this data to spot patterns at the touch of a button.
For example, our systems may hold the information that a single burglar, sex offender, gang member has committed tens of separate offences across London.
But today, we might never see that full picture without days of painstaking manual work to manually piece it together.
What’s more:
Polling undertaken by the Police Foundation for today’s event shows that around four in five Londoners support policing’s use of new technology to find missed opportunities in our fragmented data,
Having More Impact by Identifying the Powerful Few
Policing has the greatest impact when it focuses on the powerful few.
A small number of offenders carry the highest risk, such as those identified through programmes like V100. A small number are the most prolific offenders – who commit the most crime. New research also shows the programme has cut harm to victims by 54 per cent.
But today, our ability to act is constrained by a lack of tech to provide such insight.
To prove this concept, we created a pilot with Palantir, first focused on integrity problems within the Met, bringing data together, surfacing patterns that would previously have gone unnoticed, identifying potential misconduct or risk earlier, and enabling us to act more consistently.
Through that pilot, we have been able to bring together data on around 45,000 people across the organisation, moving to a discovery-based model. We are no longer reliant solely on concerns being raised by colleagues or victims coming forward. We can now proactively identify problem individuals or patterns, spot risks earlier and intervene before harm occurs. It is already proving to be a step change.
And if we can do this within our own organisation, then we must now bring the same technologies to bear in how we tackle crime more broadly. Because this is the shift we need to make, from reacting after the fact to preventing harm before it happens.
Saving Money Through Automation
Data exploitation and automation can also save us money
Policing is necessarily bureaucratic. We put people in prison, we do not cut corners, and rightly so. But the administrative burden that creates is enormous.
For example, to complete a standard task such as vetting, building a profile of an active criminal, or mapping an organised crime group, officers often have to manually search across 22 separate internal and external systems. We have thousands of officers and staff carrying out this work every day.
The best data integration, analytics, automation and AI packages can now make this possible for the officer at the touch of a button to enable them to make a decision.
Londoners also support this use of technology with 64 per cent of Londoners agreeing policing should make greater use of AI to process information quicker.
Technology Builds Trust and Confidence
The third and final section of our approach is all about how, contrary to what you hear from some campaigners – technology builds trust.
Technology is not just reducing crime. It is building trust. Officers and staff will remain at the heart of every decision. What this approach does is equip good people with better tools. It does not mean abandoning ethics, quite the opposite. It means strengthening them.
There will be human oversight underpinned by clear values and accountability at every stage. We agree with Londoners that AI should support, not make decisions.
Whenever we talk about using data and technology in policing, it understandably raises important questions about civil liberties. I hear those concerns often. Questions about who can access data, and how it is used. About proportionality, accuracy, and bias. About whether we always have the right lawful basis. And about transparency.
These are not concerns to dismiss. They are fundamental to policing by consent.
But I also hear something else, very consistently, from Londoners themselves. They want us to use technology. They want us to be more effective. They are not fearful of us using data properly. They are frustrated when we do not.
The polling Dame Sara discussed at the start highlights that Londoners believe criminals are ahead of us in their use of technology.
There is also clear support from Londoners for our use of AI to safeguard vulnerable people faster, joining the dots to link related crimes, and identifying serious offenders.
When asked what worries them more, Londoners are more than twice as likely to be concerned about policing failing to join the dots to catch criminals than the fact we used AI to do so.
The barriers and opportunities
Finally as I hope I have demonstrated, we are making progress and we’re ambitious about how technology can transform policing, supercharge our ability to join the dots, and put market-leading tools in the hands of our officers and staff.
To do this, and to succeed, we need to crash through the barriers and seize opportunities.
The first is investment
For decades, politicians have been more interested in police officer numbers than whether officers are equipped with the right technology. The result has been the protection of budgets for salaries, while all other spend, including on technology and infrastructure, has faced deep cuts.
Meanwhile, other areas of the public sector have been able to protect or grow their technology budgets. At the top end, they are spending more than £13,000 per person on tech and data. Yet the Met is only able to afford around £6,000, less than half that amount.
We do not judge NASA solely on how many astronauts it has, or an airline solely by how many pilots it employs.
The same should be true for policing.
Second: policing reform
The Home Secretary’s policing White Paper set out a clear vision for a new policing model, one I have championed, which will create a strong centre in the National Police Service and fewer local police forces.
The current cost, complexity, and delays in building modern technology 43 times over are prohibitive.
Without reform new technology will have to be deployed into 43 different IT infrastructures. Criminals don’t respect boundaries, yet our current model makes national data exploitation nearly impossible.
Police reform also offers an opportunity to ensure we are equipping policing leaders with the skills they need to understand and embrace technology.
We now need to deliver reform soon, or it will only be a matter of time before we face a disaster that a simpler model with integrated, advanced technology would have avoided. Better to reform now and prevent that disaster than be forced to change after it.
Third: legislation
Policing by consent is key to the British policing model and is something we must treasure in this new age.
However, when it comes to new technologies as we saw with LFR , some campaign groups call for new legislation and restrictions every time a new capability emerges.
While that comes from a legitimate place, it risks slowing progress to the point where policing cannot keep pace with the threats we face.
We already operate within a robust legislative framework including the Human Rights Act, the Investigatory Powers Act, the Data Protection Act and GDPR, and we are overseen by at least five regulators and commissioners.
If every time a new capability emerges, or we find a new use case for data exploitation, we have to wait for new legislation before we use it, we will fail.
We cannot legislate for every incremental development in technology. The pace is simply too fast, and the legislative process is too slow.
Fourth: public sector procurement
Taxpayers expect us to spend every pound well. No one is arguing with that, but over time we have created a public sector procurement bureaucracy that is slow, rigid, and restrictive, and delivers outcomes months, if not years, after they wereare needed.
At present, we could spend around six months defining requirements, followed by three months of market engagement, and another six months running the procurement exercise. Before you know it that is 15 months to award and mobilise a supplier.
This will not work for today’s new technology. The breakneck pace of change means the public sector will be left behind.
We need a radical overhaul that balances pace with proportionate checks and balances, and that places more emphasis on strategic partnerships with suppliers, rather than rigid requirements that quickly become out of date.
In Conclusion
You can see our determination in the announcements today on LFR and drones to regain the advantage over criminals.
I have been clear on the help we need to keep pace.
We have a choice.
Policing already holds the data that could identify victims sooner, stop offenders earlier and prevent harm. But without the right technology, that insight remains hidden.
Thank you.
The original announcement can be found here.
