The Detroit Police Department revised its policies on how it uses facial recognition to solve crimes as part of a settlement reached in a federal lawsuit filed by a Farmington Hills man who was wrongfully arrested for theft in 2020 based on the technology.
The settlement between Robert Williams and the city of Detroit was filed in federal court on Friday and the case dismissed. In May, Detroit City Council approved paying Williams $300,000 for damages as part of the settlement.
The American Civil Liberties Union of Michigan, which sued on behalf of Williams, announced the policy changes Detroit police made during a Friday news conference, which include:
- Police can’t make arrests based on facial recognition results alone, or on the results of photo lineups based on a facial recognition search.
- Police can’t conduct lineups based on facial recognition alone without other independent, reliable evidence linking the suspect to a crime.
- Police must disclose the flaws of facial recognition technology and must disclose when facial recognition is used when making an arrest. Additionally, police must disclose when facial recognition technology did not come up with a suspect, or when the results showed different suspects.
- Training on facial recognition that includes risks and dangers of the technology and the disproportionate rate in which people of color are misidentified at higher rates.
- An audit must be conducted of all cases since 2017 where Detroit police used facial recognition technology to obtain an arrest warrant.
The policies will be enforced by federal court for four years, ACLU officials said.
Williams was falsely identified as the perpetrator of a theft from a Shinola store in October 2018. Williams was arrested in front of his family in January 2020 and held for 30 hours before he was released on a personal bond, according to his lawsuit.
A Detroit detective ran a grainy photo made from poorly lit footage through the department’s facial recognition technology, Williams’ lawsuit states, and still relied on the results to arrest Williams. In the footage, the shoplifter never looks directly into the camera, the lawsuit said.
Williams, who was at Friday’s news conference, said abuse of facial recognition technology “completely upended my life.”
“My wife and young daughters had to watch helplessly as I was arrested for a crime I didn’t commit and by the time I got home from jail, I had already missed my youngest losing her first tooth and my eldest couldn’t even bear to look at my picture. Even now, years later, it still brings them to tears when they think about it,” he said in a statement.
“The scariest part is that what happened to me could have happened to anyone.”
Following Williams’ wrongful arrest, Detroit police created a facial recognition policy that includes three independent sign-offs before the technology can be approved to use in an investigation, the department said in a statement to the Free Press on Friday. The policy also stated the technology could not be used as the basis for identifying a suspect, the department said.
Representatives with the ACLU described the controversial facial recognition technology as “dangerous,” and described settlement as “groundbreaking.”
The policies Detroit police made will serve as a model for other police agencies nationally on best practices of facial recognition technology, said Phil Mayor, senior staff attorney at the ACLU of Michigan.
Detroit police said in its statement that the department is pleased with the policy changes, and that it also “firmly” believes the policy changes will serve as a national example of best facial recognition practices.
“While the work DPD and the ACLU do may differ, our goals are similar — to ensure policing is done in a fair, equitable, and constitutional manner,” the department wrote in its statement.
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In August 2023, Detroit police strengthened its photo lineup and facial recognition technology policies after “shoddy” police work led to the wrongful arrest of a woman who was eight months pregnant, Police Chief James White previously said.
The policy changes were announced after a wrongful arrest and imprisonment lawsuit was filed in federal court by Porcha Woodruff, who was accused in a January 2023 carjacking and robbery she did not commit and arrested the next month.
The pending lawsuit — filed against the city and the detective who put her behind bars for 11 hours — argues that a false facial recognition match wrongfully identified her as the suspect despite the fact that the real suspect was never described as visibly pregnant.
The detective on the case used a facial recognition photo in the lineup presented to the carjacking victim, White said, describing the detective’s actions as “literally, perhaps one of the most counterintuitive things you could do.”
“Because it’s going to already produce look-a-likes,” White had said. “In other words, you’re not going to put a suspect’s twin in a lineup.”
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Those policy changes announced by White in August 2023 include:
- Officers are prohibited from using facial recognition photos in lineups.
- DPD will use a sequential double-blind photo lineup, meaning each photo will be placed in an envelope and delivered to witnesses individually.
- Officers involved in an investigation where a photo lineup is used cannot present the photo lineup.
- Two captains must review warrant requests for arrests when facial technology is used in an investigation.
Andrea Sahouri covers criminal justice for the Detroit Free Press. She can be contacted at asahouri@freepress.com.