Video doorbells, CCTV, facial recognition: how the police tracked UK rioters

The hunt to find the rioters and the people who incited them began the moment the first brick was thrown. But the efforts to catch them will last weeks or months, and involve super-recognisers, specialist software, video doorbells and, in a few cases, criminal stupidity.

A dizzying number of newly convicted rioters and online agitators were this weekend waking up in a prison cell on the first day of their sentence. Of the more than 700 arrests made so far, about 300 people had been charged by Friday night, with more arrests and court appearances on Saturday.

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Anyone who has watched a police procedural will have some idea of how officers work, but the reality is usually more prosaic than a TV drama. Some people who commit crimes simply don’t think before they act.

Tyler Kay, a 26-year-old from Northampton, posted on X that people should set fire to hotels with asylum seekers inside. Helpfully for Northamptonshire police, he also tagged them in his posts. On Friday, Kay was jailed for 38 months after admitting publishing material intended to stir up racial hatred.

The sheer volume of video footage can be overwhelming, and civil society groups such as Hope Not Hate and Tech Against Terrorism say police are sometimes restricted in ways they can monitor the footage. And finding the people who instigated and incited the protests in the first place is much more complex.

Teams in the 19 police forces in England and Northern Ireland where violent disorder happened since 30 July have been scouring social media videos and going through CCTV and body-worn camera footage. Forces in Merseyside, Cleveland, Greater Manchester and Avon and Somerset have all so far issued pictures of people they want to question.

“They’re going through CCTV, other images they’ve picked up, cross-referencing it with whatever they find on people, whether it’s tattoos or birthmarks,” said Dr Victor Olisa, a former Met police chief superintendent and now an adviser to Police Scotland.

Olisa, who was borough commander for Haringey in north London after the 2011 riots, said the volume of video had grown hugely since the disorder and looting that followed the death of Mark Duggan in Tottenham.

“You’ve got local authority CCTV, traffic CCTV, lots of business premises have it now, and the public has video doorbells,” he said. “That makes it easier for police to collect evidence and present evidence in court. People who have previous convictions will be in the Police National Computer.

“There will be masses of them. You’ve also got some officers who’ve got a brilliant memory for faces – the super-recognisers.”

Those wearing balaclavas or masks may feel safer, but Olisa said they could be detected by association. “You might have half a dozen young men and five are masked up and one isn’t. If you can find that one, say on the police database, then you can work your way back.”

Then there is facial recognition. BJ Harrington, the National Police Chiefs’ Council lead for public order, said that officers were using facial recognition software on the footage gathered, and the technology could identify people even with masks.