Facial Recognition Technology Failure Leads to False Arrest

Facial recognition technology was used to arrest a man in Georgia on a fugitive warrant.

However, a serious problem emerged from the use of the invasive technology.

The man had NEVER been to the state where the warrant originated.

Louisiana law enforcement officials used facial recognition to mistakenly link Randall Reid, 28, to the theft of luxurious purses in Baton Rouge.

“They told me I had a warrant out of Jefferson Parish. I said, ‘What is Jefferson Parish?’” Reid said.

“I have never been to Louisiana a day in my life. Then they told me it was for theft. So not only have I not been to Louisiana, I also don’t steal.”

Reid spent nearly a WEEK in jail after his wrongful arrest.

While falsely imprisoned, Reid worried about losing his job as a transportation analyst and being convicted of felonies that he did not commit.

“Not eating, not sleeping. I’m thinking about these charges. Not doing anything because I don’t know what’s really going on the whole time,” he said.

“They didn’t even try to make the right ID.”

Jefferson Parish Sheriff’s Office detectives “tacitly” admitted the misidentification and rescinded the July warrant, according to Reid’s lawyer.

NOLA.com reported:

Technology has given police vast reach to compare the faces of criminal suspects against a trove of mug shots, driver’s licenses, and even selfies plucked from social media.

But a recent attempt by the Jefferson Parish Sheriff’s Office to nab a high-end purse thief via facial recognition ended badly for a Georgia man who was jailed for almost a week over a false match, his lawyer says.

A detective took the algorithm at face value to secure a warrant to arrest Randal Reid, 28, in the June theft of luxury purses from a Metairie consignment shop, attorney Tommy Calogero said.

A Baton Rouge Police Department detective then adopted JPSO’s identification of Reid to secure an arrest warrant alleging he was among three men involved in another luxury purse theft the same week at a shop on Jefferson Highway, court records show.

The thieves allegedly stole more than $10,000 in Chanel and Louis Vuitton purses over three days.

Local police pulled over Reid on Nov. 25 as he drove on Interstate 20 in Dekalb County, Georgia, headed to a late Thanksgiving celebration with his mother, he said.

A facial recognition tool identified a Black man as a suspect in a theft in Louisiana. He was arrested 3 states and 7 hours away from the scene of the crime and spent a week in jail.

But there’s a big problem: The man has never been to Louisiana https://t.co/mkd5oENAW0

— philip lewis (@Phil_Lewis_) January 3, 2023

.@fightfortheftr called for an “all-out ban” on facial recognition technology in response to the arrest of a man wrongfully accused of theft and jailed for a week by Louisiana authorities whose use of the technology mistakenly identified the man.https://t.co/RseqyQ2rc8

— Robert F. Kennedy Jr (@RobertKennedyJr) January 4, 2023

Reclaim The Net added:

Reid, who is black, was released after five days. The sheriff in Jefferson rescinded the warrant due to differences like a mole on Reid’s face. According to Reid’s lawyer, Tommy Calogero, there was also about a 40-pound difference between Reid and the purse thief in the surveillance image.

Reid’s case renews criticism of facial recognition technology, particularly in relation to those with dark skin where the technology is shown to be even more inaccurate.

Research shows that this technology is more likely to misidentify black people and those with darker skin than white people but overall has low accuracy levels.

Facial recognition is dangerous technology that solidifies more power for the State.

It should be abolished from every facet of our lives.

“So much wrong here,” Fight for the Future said.

“Police blindly trusted a facial recognition scan to arrest a man in Georgia. He was wrongly imprisoned for a WEEK. Now (surprise, surprise) the cops are stonewalling the press about their failure.”

– Cops are using facial recognition without disclosing the fact that they're using it
– Police can scan your face using your driver's license photo, pics on social media, and more
– You can be arrested, your life can be upended because of a machine's mistake

— @fight@fightforthefuture.org on Mastodon (@fightfortheftr) January 3, 2023

Common Dreams noted:

The national ACLU has previously called on policymakers to end law enforcement use of facial recognition technology across the United States—including after the January 2020 wrongful arrest of Robert Williams, a Black man in Michigan misidentified as a shoplifting suspect.

“My daughters can’t unsee me being handcuffed and put into a police car. But they can see me use this experience to bring some good into the world,” Williams wrote in a June 2020 opinion piece. “I keep thinking about how lucky I was to have spent only one night in jail—as traumatizing as it was. Many Black people won’t be so lucky. My family and I don’t want to live with that fear. I don’t want anyone to live with that fear.”

Even before Williams’ arrest, Fight for the Future and partners groups launched a “Ban Facial Recognition” campaign, which has tracked restrictions and known uses of the technology as well as enabled constituents to pressure lawmakers to ban it. Despite some progress in restricting or banning law enforcement’s use of such tools at the local and state levels, the United States still lacks federal law on the topic.

“Like nuclear or biological weapons, facial recognition poses a threat to human society and basic liberty that far outweighs any potential benefits,” the campaign’s website argues. “Silicon Valley lobbyists are disingenuously calling for light ‘regulation’ of facial recognition so they can continue to profit by rapidly spreading this surveillance dragnet. They’re trying to avoid the real debate: whether technology this dangerous should even exist.”

According to the campaign, “Industry-friendly and government-friendly oversight will not fix the dangers inherent in law enforcement’s use of facial recognition: We need an all-out ban.”