London: Carnival to Draw Huge Crowds

More than 1.5 million people are expected on London’s streets this weekend for the Notting Hill Carnival.

There will be the glittering parades, bands and floats. There will be the tourists and revellers. And there will be the largest ever contingent of Metropolitan Police determined to thwart the accompanying influx of pickpockets, con artists and gang members.

What has been billed as “Europe’s Biggest Street Party” with its music, dancing, fun and mayhem is also a magnet for those determined to use it as an opportunity for crime. One person’s celebration of Afro-Caribbean heritage, cuisine and fashion is another’s person criminal opening.

For Liberty, the civil rights movement, it is also an opportunity to monitor more closely the Met’s use of controversial facial recognition technology, which will be used to scan the faces of carnival-goers. Liberty has written to the police, asking if they “ intend to use it. The Met issued a brief statement confirming it would be doing so but refusing to elaborate.

Faces in the Crowd

A spokesperson for Liberty told Felix Magazine that the rights group was unimpressed by the police handling of the issue.

“The Met have not said an awful lot, we found out about its use by email, they have not told us officially,” she said. “We wrote to them asking if they planned to use it. All we have had from them is an email saying yes, they are and that’s it. We have asked them for meetings about it and have not heard back from them, we have had nothing back. They don’t seem very interested about talking about it.”

Liberty claims that the use of the technology could be discriminatory.

“We think it will lead to problems, there are all sorts of concerns about its use,” the spokesperson said. “Firstly there is no law governing use of this technology, there hasn’t been any debate about it publicly or in Parliament and there’s no regulations over its use.”

“We are concerned about it because it is targeted at the Notting Hill Carnival which is a celebration of the Afro-Caribbean community and this technology has been found to identify black people more than it does white people and there is real potential for discrimination in its use.”

A Metropolitan Police spokesman said that only those images which came up with a match to a wanted offender would be retained by police.

The spokesman added that while it was possible the faces of members of the public in the background of a positive identification might also feature on the database, those images would “be retained for the purposes of analysis of this project only and will not be speculatively searched or disseminated for any purpose”.

Grenfell Tower

Extra police – they will not discuss numbers, although it is expected to be more than 9,000 – will be drafted in to provide security around Grenfell Tower, which is on the route of Monday’s parade.

Work on the tower will stop for the whole Bank Holiday weekend and the procession of floats and bands including as many as 50,000 performers is expected to pause near the tower, which is towards the end of the route.

They will observe a minute’s silence at around 3pm to mark the tragedy, in which at least 80 people died. London Mayor Sadiq Khan rejected a proposal to re-route the carnival away from Grenfell Tower. He tweeted that: “Notting Hill Carnival is a firm London tradition and incredibly important to the local community. It should not be moved.”

The Met Police spokesman said the extra resources would be deployed to ensure that “the security of the Grenfell Tower site is maintained and to protect the many items and memorials that have been placed near Grenfell Tower.”

Organisers are encouraging attendees to wear “green for Grenfell” in a display of “reverence and respect amidst the revelry”. Pepe Francis, chairman of the carnival trust, said: “The colour green represents renewal, growth and harmony and we feel that this sums up the support and respect for the Grenfell community and our neighbours.”

 

by Bob Graham

 

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