The
Detroit Police Department mistakenly arrested a mother of three based on a false match using facial recognition software, according to a
lawsuit against the department.
The case, according to civil rights advocates, highlights the dangers of bias in using such technologies in police work, which
studies have shown do a poor job of matching images of non-white people.
Early on the morning of 16 February, six
Detroitpolice officers arrived outside the door of Porcha Woodruff, 32.
Ms Woodruff, 32, was eight months pregnant at the time, and was helping her two children get ready for school.
Police informed the mother, who is Black, that she was under arrest for a January carjacking and robbery.
“Are you kidding, carjacking? Do you see that I am eight months pregnant?” she told officers, according to a federal
lawsuit filed last week.
She later learned police identified her as a suspect after running security footage through the department’s facial recognition software, then putting a 2015 mugshot from a past arrest into a photo lineup where the carjacking victim singled out Ms Woodruff as her assailant.
Though officials later dropped the case, Ms Woodruff argues in the suit the whole incident, which allegedly led her to suffer stress, dehydration, and stress-induced contractions, is an illustration of the dangers of biased facial-recognition software.
“Despite its potential, law enforcement’s reliance on facial recognition has led to wrongful arrests, causing humiliation, embarrassment, and physical injury, as evident in this particular incident,” the complaint alleges.
Detroit Police said they are investigation her claims.……
In 2019, a 25-year-old Black man named
Michael Oliver was wrongly accused of felony charges of stealing and breaking a teacher’s cell phone.
Facial recognition software convinced police to put his photo in a lineup, even though he had visible tattos, and a different body type, skin tone, and hair style than the individual involved in the alleged theft.
The following year, Robert Julian-Borchak was arrested in front of his family for an alleged theft from a high-end Detroit Shinola boutique.
His name was given to police after a security contractor sent surveillance video to the DPD, which forwarded the footage to the Michigan State Police, who matched Mr Borchak’s name using a facial recognition tool.
The case was later dismissed.
“This is not me,” Robert Julian-Borchak Williams told police during his investigation,
according to The New York Times. “You think all Black men look alike?”…….
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/...ial-recognition-porcha-woodruff-b2389768.html