On June 28, 2018, a gunman armed with a shotgun entered the offices of The Capitol, a newspaper based in Annapolis, Maryland. According to police, shots rang out at 2:34 P.M. after the gunman had barricaded the rear exit of the office to prevent people from escaping.

Armed with a 12-gauge shotgun, the deranged man shot through the glass doors of the office and opened fire on multiple employees.

During the shooting, office staff described a pause in the chaos and hearing the gunman reload his shotgun. One victim, Wendi Winters, ran towards the gunman with a trashcan giving some of her co-workers enough time to escape the building. Sadly, five employees of the newspaper were killed in this heinous act and two were injured.

According to reports, the Anne Arundel County Police responded to the shooting in about a minute, which is an exceptional response time.

Upon arrival, law enforcement began evacuating the building and looking for the shooter, who was discovered hiding underneath a desk in the offices.

After taking the suspect into custody, police faced a plethora of problems including the fact that the suspect had no identification, he wouldn’t speak to investigators and a fingerprint database was not returning any matches.

In other words, the biggest part of their investigation was simply a complete unknown. With no other options, police decided to take a picture of the suspect and run it through Maryland’s state-of-the-art facial recognition database. The system quickly returned a match to the photo.

Essentially, this database was able to scan for a match across tens of millions of images from driver’s licenses, offender photos and mug shots from an FBI database.

In the end, this saved law enforcement countless hours of trying to determine whom the shooter was as the database immediately matched the photo with a name of Jarrod Ramos.

Here’s the thing, I realize none of us have access to an FBI database of millions of photos, but facial recognition cameras can still be used to keep your home safe.

In fact, facial recognition cameras are great for indoor use because they can help decipher whether it’s a family member (or burglar roaming around in your house when you’re not there.)

What I mean is, these cameras can be set up to only record motion from an unknown person. It won’t automatically record every time a family member comes home but can be configured to set off an alarm to help catch an unknown intruder.

With that in mind, here are the top facial recognition security cameras I would consider checking out if this is something that interests you.

Nest Cam IQ. The Nest Cam IQ can detect the differences between people and objects and allows you to zoom in on the video feed while still viewing the entirety of the main video picture. In addition, the HD camera and infrared LED’s provide a clear picture whether it’s dark or bright inside.

The camera includes facial recognition so you can filter alerts if you don’t want the camera to record every family member. The Nest Cam IQ indoor camera includes a microphone and speaker for easy two-way communication and sells on Amazon.

Tend Insight Lynx. This HD camera includes night vision as well as facial recognition software so you can choose whom the camera recognizes and if you want it to record the person.

Plus, it has two-way audio, motion detection, and instant alerts so you will immediately know if an unknown person has entered your home.

As with all of these cameras, you can watch the video from the mobile app and see right away what motion was detected in your home. This camera is also sold on Amazon and is much less expensive than other options.

Netatmo Welcome Security Camera. While this company may not be as well-known as the others, they have come out with a very respectable camera with many different options. This camera records to an SD card or can be set up to back up video to a DropBox account.

As with the other cameras, you can set this one up to ignore known faces using its facial recognition technology. One of the best features of this camera is that it will activate and record upon hearing a security alarm or even a smoke detector.

In other words, it’s another added layer to alert you to some sort of problem. The Netatmo camera sells for $189 on Amazon and is very easy to set up.