Live Facial Recognition (LFR) cameras have led to the arrest of three people in Harlow.

The arrests were made over the weekend of September 7 and 8, with one suspect wanted by police since May for suspicion of harassment.

Another individual was wanted on suspicion of causing actual bodily harm, while the third person was wanted on suspicion of common assault.

A fourth individual was positively identified in connection with a common assault and agreed to attend a police station for an interview voluntarily.

The LFR cameras have previously been deployed on Southend seafront and High Street on August 25 and 26, over the bank holiday weekend.

These deployments resulted in five positive alerts and two arrests – one for harassment and one for sexual assault.

The first deployment at the Clacton Airshow on August 22 and 23 saw five positive alerts leading to three arrests.

Detective Superintendent Gary Biddle said: "This was another successful deployment where we’ve been able to bring suspects into custody and progress our investigations.

"We were particularly happy to show members of the public how the technology works and answer the questions they had, and dozens of people wanted to know more when we visited Harlow on Saturday.

"We’ve now had eight arrests from our three deployments.

"We’ve seen Live Facial Recognition technology can be an effective tool in finding people we want to speak to.

"This technology is an investment in our communities.

"It’s an effective way of finding people we want to speak to and keeping the public safe.

"This technology can be a more efficient use of resources than having officers undertaking various time-consuming enquiries to locate them.

"It means those officers are able to do other work to protect and help the public, and further investigations."

According to the police, the LFR technology is used to find people wanted for serious offences, help enforce orders against those on a 'watch list', and protect those who are vulnerable and at risk of harm.

If a person's face is not on the watch list, their image is deleted in a fraction of a second and is not retained or stored on a database.

The technology is advanced enough to recognise partially covered faces.