The city of Detroit agreed to pay $300,000 to a man who was wrongly accused of shoplifting, and it also changed how police use facial recognition technology to solve crimes.
The terms are part of a lawsuit settlement with Robert Williams, whose driver's license photo was incorrectly determined to be a likely match for a man seen on security cameras at a Shinola watch shop in 2018.
“I'm very happy that there are now stronger safeguards around the use of this technology that will make it a better world to live in,” Williams told reporters. “But our preference would be to never use this technology at all.”
The agreement was announced Friday by the American Civil Liberties Union and the University of Michigan Law School's Civil Rights Litigation Initiative, which argues the technology is flawed and racially discriminatory. Williams is Black.
Detroit police will be barred from making arrests based solely on facial recognition results and will not make arrests based on photo lineups generated by facial recognition searches, the ACLU said.
“Police can use facial recognition clues to do some good old-fashioned policing and see whether they actually have reason to believe that the person they've identified may have committed a crime,” said ACLU attorney Phil Meyer.
There was no immediate comment from the Detroit Police Department on the settlement. Last August, while the litigation was still ongoing, Chief James White announced a new policy regarding the technology. The move came after an eight-month pregnant woman claimed she had been wrongly accused of carjacking.
White said at the time that police needed evidence other than technology to believe a suspect had the “means, ability and opportunity to commit a crime.”
Under the agreement with Williams, Detroit police will retroactively review incidents where facial recognition was used from 2017 to 2023. If police find that an arrest was made without independent evidence, prosecutors will be notified.
“When someone is arrested and charged based on the results of a facial recognition scan and a photo of their face in a line, they often face intense pressure to plead guilty,” Meyer said. “And especially if, unlike Mr. Williams, they have a criminal history, they face longer sentences and greater suspicion from police and prosecutors.”
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