WA Police end five-month facial recognition trial with 122 arrests
Western Australia Police have concluded a five-month trial of real-time facial recognition technology, which ended on Saturday, and the force has released figures on its results. According to The Guardian, the trial led to 122 arrests.
The technology is called Overt Live Facial Recognition, or OLFR. It compares live camera feeds against alert lists to identify people police are seeking. The trial began on Monday 22 June 2026, and WA Police said the capability was rolled out to prevent and detect crime and to find wanted and dangerous criminals.
The trial ran 100 deployments across 43 locations in regional and metropolitan Western Australia. In that time the system scanned 1,380,882 faces. Alerts led officers to engage with 146 registered sex offenders, and to locate 10 people for a welfare check, a visit to make sure a person is safe and well.
Three operations at the Perth Royal Show accounted for a smaller share of the totals. Those operations scanned 223,749 faces and produced 15 alerts, three arrests and seven interactions with registered sex offenders.
The system also generated nine incorrect alerts. WA Police put the error rate at 0.00065 per cent, based on those nine alerts from 1.38 million scans. Commissioner Col Blanch said that no one was arrested as a result of the false alerts and that no complaint was made.
The police surveillance vans used for the technology have been removed from public deployment while the trial is evaluated. In October, a question in the state parliament had asked for figures from the trial since it began, up to the most recent reporting date.
