Facewatch is beginning live beta testing of Facewatch Live, a new retail crime intelligence and management platform that will be available free to retailers and police, the company announced today (Oct 23).
The platform is designed to give retailers a much clearer understanding of the crime affecting their businesses and can be deployed as a standalone crime reporting solution or sit alongside Facewatch’s established live facial recognition technology. Used together, the two systems can help retailers understand offending across their stores and target preventative action where it is most needed. Retailers can also use either service independently.
Nick Fisher, CEO of Facewatch, said: “Live facial recognition has already proved the value of giving retailers accurate, actionable intelligence the moment an offender enters a store.
“Facewatch Live gives retailers the opportunity to record incidents, see the bigger picture in their own crime data, and build stronger evidence against prolific offenders.
“Retailers can decide which system best suits their needs, but feedback from current retail partners who have helped build the platform is that the two systems together offer a powerful force against retail crime.”
Facewatch Live’s beta testing phase will put the platform into day-to-day operational use with loss prevention and retail teams in participating stores across the UK, allowing for further retailer feedback and fine-tuning before the platform becomes more widely available.
Participating retailers will test how the platform brings incidents, CCTV, images, witness information and other supporting evidence together to build a clearer picture of crime across individual stores and entire estates.
Multiple incidents can be associated with the same offender profile, helping retailers identify repeat and prolific offending that can be difficult to recognise when incidents are viewed separately. Linked incidents and supporting evidence can also be assembled into structured case files for submission to participating police forces, helping police identify patterns of prolific or organised offending that may not be apparent when incidents are considered separately.
Facewatch Live will be available as a completely standalone service, giving retailers free access to record incidents, manage supporting evidence and analyse their own crime data. It will not be necessary for a retailer to subscribe to Facewatch's Live Facial Recognition service in order to use Facewatch Live. For retailers that also use facial recognition, however, the combination provides an additional opportunity to connect incident intelligence with real-time crime prevention.