The city of Detroit has agreed to pay $300,000 to a man who wrongly accused of shoplifting and also change the way police use facial recognition technology to solve crimes.
The terms are part of a settlement agreement with Robert Williams, whose driver’s license photo was wrongly reported as a likely match to that of a man seen on security video at a Shinola watch store in 2018.
“We’re extremely excited that in the future there will be more assurances about the use of this technology, in the hope that we’ll live in a better world because of it,” Williams told reporters, “even though we’d like them not to use it at all.”
The agreement was announced Friday by the American Civil Liberties Union and the Civil Rights Litigation Initiative at the University of Michigan Law School. They argue that the technology is flawed and racially biased. Williams is black.
Detroit police will not be allowed to arrest people based solely on facial recognition results and will not make arrests based on photo lineups generated from a facial recognition search, the ACLU said.
“They can get a facial recognition track and then go do the old-fashioned police work and see if there’s actually reason to believe that the person who was identified … might have committed a crime,” said Phil Mayor, an ACLU attorney.
Detroit police had no immediate comment on the settlement. Last August, while the litigation was still ongoing, Chief James White announced new policies regarding the technology. This decision was taken after an investigation woman who was eight months pregnant She said she was wrongly accused of carjacking.
At the time, White said there had to be other evidence, beyond technology, for police to believe a suspect had “the means, the ability and the opportunity to commit the crime.”
The agreement with Williams calls for Detroit police to return and review cases from 2017 to 2023 in which facial recognition was used. A prosecutor will be notified if police learn that an arrest was made without independent evidence.
“When someone is arrested and charged based on a facial recognition scan and the result of an identification, they are often under significant pressure to plead guilty,” the mayor said. “This is especially true if the individual – unlike Mr. Williams – has a criminal record and therefore faces longer sentences and more suspicious police and prosecutors.”
