He city of detroit will pay $300,000 to a man wrongfully accused of shoplifting. And as part of a settlement reached with the man, the city will change the way its police force uses facial recognition technology to identify suspects.
Robert Williams’ driver’s license photo was incorrectly flagged as a possible match for a man captured on grainy security video in a robbery at a Shinola watch store in 2018. Williams was arrested two years later in front of his wife and two young daughters on the front lawn of their home in the Detroit suburb of Farmington Hills.
“We are very excited that in the future there will be more safeguards in the use of this technology and our hope is to live in a better world because of it, although what we would like them to do is not use it at all,” Williams said, according to The Associated Press.
Williams, a Black man, was jailed for more than 24 hours and defended himself in court before charges were eventually dropped, according to the American Civil Liberties Union, which says facial recognition technology is flawed and racially biased. , and notes that there has been a higher rate of false matches for black people.
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The city of Detroit agreed to pay Robert Williams $300,000 after he was wrongly accused of theft using facial recognition technology. (Drew English/ACLU via AP)
Williams is one of three people, all Black, wrongfully arrested after Detroit police used facial recognition technology in an attempt to identify a suspect, the ACLU said in a news release announcing the settlement.
Police Chief James White announced new policies last August, while the litigation was still ongoing, regarding facial recognition technology. This came after an eight-month pregnant woman said she had been wrongfully accused of carjacking.
White said at the time that there must be evidence beyond technology for police to believe a suspect had the “means, ability and opportunity to commit the crime.”
As part of the settlement with Williams, Detroit police will be prohibited from arresting people based solely on facial recognition results and will not be able to make arrests based on photo lineups created from a facial recognition search, according to the ACLU.
“The abuses of facial recognition technology by the Detroit Police Department completely changed my life,” Williams said in the ACLU news release. “My wife and young daughters had to watch helplessly as I was arrested for a crime I did not commit and by the time I returned home from jail, I had already missed my youngest daughter losing her first tooth and my oldest daughter couldn't even stand it. Even now, years later, it still brings tears to their eyes when they think about it.”
The police department will also conduct an audit of all cases from 2017 to 2023 that relied on facial recognition technology to obtain an arrest warrant. A prosecutor will be informed if police determine that an arrest was made without independent evidence.
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As part of the agreement, Detroit police will be prohibited from arresting people based solely on facial recognition results and will not be able to make arrests based on photo lineups created from a facial recognition search. (iStock)
“Police reliance on shoddy technology only breeds shoddy investigations,” said Phil Mayor, senior staff attorney for the ACLU of Michigan. “With this settlement, the Detroit Police Department should move from being a national leader in unwarranted arrests driven by facial recognition technology to being a leader in implementing meaningful security measures to restrict and limit the use of the technology.”
The mayor told The Associated Press that police can find a facial recognition lead and then do “traditional police work” to see if there is any reason to believe the identified person might have committed a crime.
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Williams was represented by the ACLU and the University of Michigan Law School Civil Rights Litigation Initiative.
“We hope this groundbreaking settlement will not only prevent future unjust arrests of Black people in Detroit, but serve as a model for other police departments that insist on using facial recognition technology,” said Michael J. Steinberg, director of the Civil Rights Litigation Initiative at the University of Michigan Law School.
“We are also delighted that Mr Williams, who has become the face of the movement to stop the misuse of facial recognition, will receive some relief.”
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
