Detroit paying $300,000 to man wrongly accused of robbery

DDetroit — The city of Detroit has agreed to pay $300,000 to a man who was wrongfully accused of shoplifting and also change the way police use facial recognition technology to solve crimes.

The conditions are part of a plea deal with Robert Williams. His driver’s license photo was incorrectly flagged as a likely match to a man seen in security video at a Shinola watch store in 2018.

“We are extremely excited about the fact that going forward there will be more safeguards in the use of this technology, and our hope is to live in a better world because of it,” Williams told reporters, “although what we would like them to do is not use no way.”

The settlement was announced Friday by the American Civil Liberties Union and the University of Michigan Law School’s Civil Rights Litigation Initiative. They argue that the technology is flawed and racially biased. Williams is black.

Detroit police will be prohibited from arresting 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 lead and then they can go out and do old-fashioned police work and see if there really is any reason to believe that the person who was identified…may have committed a crime,” said Phil Mayor, an ACLU attorney.

There was no immediate comment from Detroit police on the settlement. Last August, while litigation was still active, Chief James White announced new policies regarding the technology. The change occurred after a woman who was eight months pregnant said she was wrongly accused of car theft.

At the time, White said there had to be other evidence, outside of technology, for police to believe a suspect had the “means, capacity and opportunity to commit the crime.”

The agreement with Williams says Detroit police will go back 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 lineup result, they often face significant pressure to plead guilty,” Mayor said. “This is even more true if the individual – unlike Mr. Williams – has a criminal record and therefore faces longer sentences and more suspicious police and prosecutors.”