A man in a camouflage jacket, baseball cap and football shirt whizzed across Cardiff Central Square on an e-bike on Thursday morning. Fifty yards away, in a blacked-out police van decked out with leather chairs, a desk and screens, an alarm was sounding.
His face had been matched with one on a criminal “watchlist”, and officers from South Wales Police’s live facial recognition team were mobilising to arrest him. He was wanted for breaching court-imposed conditions and, helped by this new technology supported by artificial intelligence, the police had him in handcuffs in a matter of minutes.
