As po­lice in­ten­si­fy their ef­forts to fight the ris­ing mur­der rate, the Act­ing Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er says they will soon be us­ing fa­cial recog­ni­tion soft­ware to de­tect and pre­vent crime.

In an in­ter­view with Guardian Me­dia on Wednes­day, Mc­Don­ald Ja­cob said the new tech­nol­o­gy should be in­tro­duced soon.

This comes on the heels of an an­nounce­ment on Tues­day night by Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley, who said the Gov­ern­ment was spend­ing $80Mil­lion to ac­quire and in­stall 2500 CCTV cam­eras across the coun­try.

The Prime Min­is­ter was speak­ing dur­ing a Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) meet­ing at Sig­na­ture Hall in Ch­agua­nas when he made the an­nounce­ment. On Wednes­day, Ja­cob said the TTPS is ea­ger­ly await­ing this CCTV grid to as­sist them in their crime-fight­ing ini­tia­tives.

How­ev­er, he said he could not pro­vide in­for­ma­tion on how many of those cam­eras were al­ready in­stalled or were be­ing in­stalled as it was be­ing done by a con­trac­tor hired by the Min­istry of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty.

He al­so re­vealed that an­oth­er Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty agency is cur­rent­ly test­ing fa­cial recog­ni­tion soft­ware, which the TTPS will have ac­cess to "soon."

The act­ing top cop ad­mit­ted he could not give a time­line for the in­tro­duc­tion of this tech­nol­o­gy, as he said it was not be­ing done by the Po­lice Ser­vice.