Canadian police trialling facial recognition bodycams

Edmonton’s municipal police force is trialling facial recognition bodycams from US-based Axon, with up to 50 officers taking part this month, according to reports. Officers won’t activate the cameras in the field unless they are actively investigating or enforcing, Axon said, and when turned on the software runs in the background without informing the wearer.

The cameras capture images of anyone within roughly four feet and send them to a cloud service, where they are compared against 6,341 people already flagged in the police system; images that do not match are deleted, and the database is owned entirely by the Police Service, meaning that Axon does not see it. This marks a shift for Axon, which in 2019 said facial recognition was not reliable enough for body cameras. The Edmonton Police Service will review the trial results and decide whether to move forward with broader use of the technology in 2026.