A 43-year-old father from Michigan has launched a lawsuit seeking damages from police after facial recognition software mistakenly identified him as a shoplifter.
Robert Williams, an automotive worker, is now seeking an ‘undisclosed’ figure from Detroit city, Detroit police Detective Donald Bussa, and police chief James Craig for his wrongful arrest.
According to reports, he was arrested in front of his family in front of their home after his driver’s license was matched with dark and grainy surveillance footage of a shoplifter.
A statement released through the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) said: “This never should have happened, and I want to make sure that this painful experience never happens to anyone else.”
Williams’ ordeal started when facial recognition software bought by Michigan police from DataWorks Plus searched through the drivers’ license photos and compared it to the grainy surveillance footage of a shoplifter who allegedly stole watches from a store in Detroit in 2018.
It resulted in Williams’ arrest in front of his wife and children on their front lawn.
“I came home from work and was arrested in my driveway in front of my wife and daughters, who watched in tears, because a computer made an error,” he said.
The father’s case received national attention when the ACLU filed a complaint calling for an immediate stop to the use of the facial recognition system.
According to the ACLU, Williams was held for 30 hours in a “filthy Detroit detention center where he was forced to sleep on a raised cement slab due to overcrowding.”
The suit filed with the US District Court for the Eastern District of Michigan calls for the use of facial recognition software to stop.
It reads: “It is well documented that facial recognition technology is flawed and unreliable under the best of circumstances.
It also says that a ‘match’ doesn’t constitute probable cause and doesn’t give cops the right to arrest.
The suit also said that detective Bussa had carried out “clearly sloppy, sloppy investigative work.”
“Bussa did not perform even a rudimentary investigation into Mr. Williams’s whereabouts during the shoplifting incident; had he done so, he would have learned that Mr. Williams was driving home from work outside of Detroit during the event in question and could not have been the culprit,” it reads.
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Replaced!