Doug MacMillan

Rather than relying on a still image of something that happened in the past, they are now running facial recognition behind a live surveillance camera that is pointing at the street.

There's over 200 of these cameras pointed at the streets, various places in New Orleans, but I think primarily in the French Quarter, which is a very tourist-rich area. It's important to the economy of New Orleans, but it's also a very crime-laden area.

The officer will take a quick beat to try to just make sure that this is the right guy, visually compare the pictures, quickly check if this person has an active warrant, and then rush out to the scene to try to approach this person and make an arrest.

They said that they had done their own internal review. They were concerned about this may or may not be in violation of local law. And so they decided to pause the automatic alerts. They're no longer getting those right now.