ACLU Sues after Faulty Detroit Facial Recognition Technology Leads to More Wrongful Arrests 

PC: teguhjatipras Via Wikimedia Commons Public Domain
PC: teguhjatipras
Via Wikimedia Commons
Public Domain

By Ximena Cesa 

DETROIT, MI – The American Civil Liberties Union this week filed a lawsuit against the Detroit Police Department for wrongfully arresting yet another person as a result of its faulty facial recognition technology.

According to the Michigan branch of the ACLU, the victim was allegedly falsely accused after the police attempted to match “an unknown suspect’s face to a photo in a database.”

This victim is the first of six who reported the false accusations from the ID system. All six who were falsely accused are Black. Of the six who were falsely accused, three were arrested.

The University of Michigan Law School’s Civil Rights Litigation Initiative and the ACLU of Michigan are combining forces to represent one of the three individuals arrested.

Their lawsuit asserts the department was guilty of “wrongfully arresting and jailing” their client in January 2020 “based on faulty facial recognition technology.”

The ACLU added that “this is the third known allegation of a wrongful arrest by the Detroit Police Department based on reliance on a false facial recognition match in three years.”

Phil Mayor, senior staff attorney for ACLU of Michigan, argues the Detroit Police Department “knows the devastating consequences of using flawed facial recognition technology as the basis for someone’s arrest and continues to rely on it anyway,”

Mayor urged Detroit to stop using the facial recognition technology, especially when used solely to arrest individuals.

ACLU of Michigan adds these arrests and accusations are just another example of how the Detroit Police Department hides its abuses and “continues to subject Detroiters to dragnet surveillance.”

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  • Vanguard Court Watch Interns

    The Vanguard Court Watch operates in Yolo, Sacramento and Sacramento Counties with a mission to monitor and report on court cases. Anyone interested in interning at the Courthouse or volunteering to monitor cases should contact the Vanguard at info(at)davisvanguard(dot)org - please email info(at)davisvanguard(dot)org if you find inaccuracies in this report.

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