Detroit rejects face recognition after grainy video got wrong man arrested

The Detroit Police Department will no longer use facial recognition results as the sole basis for an arrest, according to a recent settlement it reached with a man of color who was wrongfully arrested in 2020.

The wrongfully arrested man, Robert Williams, had spent 30 hours in jail in Detroit after facial recognition technology had wrongfully suggested that he was a shoplifter.

Williams had been arrested in connection with a shoplifting incident dating back to 2018 at a watch store in downtown Detroit. His arrest happened approximately 15 months later, based on the surveillance camera record.

The incident which led to Williams’ arrest

An unidentified criminal had stolen five watches from a store in downtown Detroit in 2018. The incident was captured on CCTV and the footage was provided to the police department by a loss prevention firm, according to a New York Times report .

The ‘ grainy’ footage captured from the date of the incident had been run on the police system which produced driver’s license photos and mugshots of over 243 individuals. An old driver’s license photo of Williams was ninth on the list, according to NYT .

However, the individual running the search had zoned in on Williams as the best match, and the report was sent to the police department.

Williams’ picture was then presented amongst five other individuals in a photo lineup, and the store’s security contractor was then asked to confirm the suspect who was ‘closest’ to the accused in the boutique.

Upon confirmation from the security contractor, a warrant was issued for Williams’ arrest.

He was picked up and had to spend the night in jail, his fingerprints and DNA sample were also collected. Charged with retail fraud, the NYT report states that Williams had to hire a lawyer to defend him.

However, he was released on personal bond soon after and later on it was proven that Williams had been at his desk at his workplace when the shoplifting happened. The case against him was eventually dropped.

Detroit police’s legal settlement

Following this, Williams had sued Detroit in 2021 – with the aim of putting an end to the use of the technology which had led to his wrongful arrest.

In the last week, the Detroit police department reached a settlement with Williams – which include a payment of $300,000 for damages and the promise to not use facial recognition technology as the sole basis for making arrests.

Moreover, as per Detroit Free Press , the Detroit police will also not conduct lineups based solely on facial recognition results without reliable independent evidence linking a suspect to the crime.

The settlement will also mandate the police department disclosing facial recognition technology’s flaws – and also the other suspects that it showed in results.

Facial recognition system and its drawbacks

A facial recognition system uses biometrics to identify a person’s features from a video or photo. The results are then run through a database to verify someone’s identity.

The system is used in stores, public areas and also in places like schools and other places to make it safer. However, there have been several instances in the past when the system has wrongly identified uninvolved individuals as suspects and this has led to arrests.

The incident involving Williams is one of the many in which wrongful arrests have taken place. The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) has been proposing new rules for its police use for years.

Phil Mayor, a lawyer for the ACLU of Michigan, was quoted by NYT as saying, “This settlement moves the Detroit Police Department from being the best-documented misuser of facial recognition technology into a national leader in having guardrails in its use.”

The police department has also stated that it is keen to use the technology in a meaningful way for public safety and asserted that it has “the strongest policy in the nation now.”