Over the past couple years, law enforcement in Nevada have been pushing to crack down on what they say are rising retail thefts. 

Now, they may have a partial solution in the form of facial recognition technology.

In late April, Sparks City Council unanimously approved a request by the local police department to roll out facial recognition software to crack down on shoplifting. The software, Dataworks Plus Facial Recognition, will be used by a handful of crime analysts to compare video or photos from crime scenes against local police databases. 

According to its proposal, Sparks police aims to see at least a 10 percent decrease in calls related to retail theft by August with use of the software, which was purchased with a nearly $19,000 grant from the state. The program will be in partnership with the Reno Police Department and Washoe County Sheriff's Office, per documents shared with Sparks City Council.

Although police documents say that retail theft will be the main focus, the software will also be used to support investigations of violent crime, property crime and fraud. 

"Facial recognition technology is an investigative tool that is to be used as supporting evidence and not standalone proof," Sparks Police Chief Chris Crawforth said during an April Sparks City Council meeting. 

The technology is the latest strategy to tackle what police say are rising theft rates in Sparks. The city has invested heavily over the last two decades to reinvent itself as a premier regional shopping destination complete with upscale outdoor malls. State data indicates that shoplifting offense in the city have increased by nearly 70 percent over the past decade, with notable increases in thefts from major shopping centers. To crack down, in 2023, Sparks law enforcement launched a "zero-tolerance policy" on shoplifting and supported a major legislative proposal in 2025 to lower the felony theft threshold. 

The deployment of the software comes amid public backlash that the Reno Police Department has made potentially thousands of unlawful arrests using the technology. 

In March, the City of Reno was sued after a local police officer arrested the wrong man using a casino's facial ID technology. The lawsuit claims Reno failed to provide proper training on the software and that a facial recognition match is not sufficient to establish probable cause for an arrest, per federal guidance.

Privacy experts and some residents also see the shoplifting scare as an excuse to introduce mass surveillance. 

"Face recognition relies on a very important part of our identity that we are not able to change," Beryl Lipton, a researcher at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, said in an interview with The Indy. "So, I think relying on face recognition for anything becomes pretty privacy invasive."

Despite concerns, Chief Crawforth maintains that there will be guardrails around the technology, including by not using it as the sole tool to establish probable cause. Unlike other facial recognition systems used in the area, Crawforth said that training certification and facial recognition would be needed to access the database. In the city council meeting, he called the technology "one piece of the puzzle. "

The City of Sparks confirmed the grant, but didn't provide additional comment on how it plans to address privacy concerns. Washoe County's Sheriff's Office said it wrote a letter in support of the program, while the Reno Police Department said it plans on teaming up with Sparks police eventually but it doesn't they don't currently have access to facial recognition technology. 

Concerns

It's not the first time police in Northern Nevada have had access to facial recognition tools. From 2023 to 2024, while using the facial recognition software, closure rates for the Sparks and Reno police departments jumped from 38 percent to more than 53 percent, according to Sparks police. 

When access to the software ended in 2025, Sparks police said that crime clearance rates dropped to 45 percent, according to department documents. It was a statistic that raised questions for Lipton.

"Are there other issues that they were running into? There's so much that goes into what actually results in a successful clearance," Lipton said. "I'm not really sure that I bought their conclusion."

Historically, the department said, investigators have relied on manual comparison of surveillance images to identify suspects, a time-intensive process. It described the grant as the first step in implementing the technology long-term and proving further justification for its use. To gauge its success, Sparks police say they plan on creating a dashboard that will track the number of thefts to see if levels decrease.

Crawforth added there will be a disclaimer on all correspondence related to the use of facial recognition, reminding officers that facial image comparison is not a positive identification. He added that only five officers in the Sparks Police Department will have access to the software. 

"We take the public's privacy very seriously and balance that with the need to bring persons committing crimes in our community to justice," Crawforth said during the Monday meeting.

But many, including Lipton, are skeptical that retail theft justifies the technology's use. She said it prioritizes low-level crimes over privacy rights and it further opens the door to the technology becoming ubiquitous as it pops up in airport terminals and tourist destinations such as Disneyland.

"I don't think that we should live in a society where we expect that just because we went into public, a police officer is going to get to know … or be able to search that in real time," she said.

Facial recognition software is already being used in Northern Nevada, most notably by casinos such as the Peppermill and the Washoe County Sheriff's Office, which uses it to compare forensic imagery against photos of people already booked. Sparks police said they would use the Washoe database to review potential suspects and then conduct a separate analysis. Meanwhile, the proposal said that Reno police will assign personnel to use the technology and contribute data.

Despite prior efforts, Nevada has no comprehensive laws on facial recognition. In the 2025 legislative session, Sen. Dina Neal (D-North Las Vegas) sponsored a bill mandating police departments create policies around the use of facial recognition software, but it never received a vote.

Lipton said that part of the problem is that some agencies roll out the technology without having policies in place. The lawsuit against the Reno police claims that, as of April 2, the department has not implemented a policy on facial recognition software. Sparks police did not respond to a request for their policies on facial recognition. 

Washoe County Sheriff's Office's policy says that no non-mugshot databases will be used by facial recognition software and that it will only be used as an investigative tool.