Robert Williams Wrongfully Arrested After Detroit Police Rely on Faulty Facial Recognition Match
Incident Details
Summary
On January 9, 2020, Robert Williams, a Black man, was arrested in his driveway in front of his wife and two young daughters by Detroit police acting on a facial recognition match generated by software made by DataWorks Plus. The system matched Williams to grainy surveillance footage of a shoplifting suspect at a Shinola watch boutique — Williams was ranked only the ninth-best match and had a clear alibi. He was held for 30 hours before release. Documented as the first known wrongful arrest in the US caused by facial recognition technology, the case became a landmark civil rights matter. The ACLU filed a federal lawsuit in 2021; a settlement reached in June 2024 required the Detroit Police Department to implement strict guardrails on facial recognition use and audit all FRT-linked warrants back to 2017.
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