US Cops Arrest Man Over False Facial-Recognition Match. They Are Now Sued

Robert Williams, a 43-year-old father in the Detroit suburb of Farmington Hills, was arrested last year and accused of taking watches from a Shinola store after police investigators used a facial recognition search of the store's surveillance-camera footage that identified him as the thief.

A Michigan man has sued Detroit police after he was wrongfully arrested and falsely identified as a shoplifting suspect by the department's facial recognition software, one of the first lawsuits of its kind to call into question the technology's risk of throwing innocent people in jail. Robert Williams, a 43-year-old father in the Detroit suburb of Farmington Hills, was arrested last year and accused of taking watches from a Shinola store after police investigators used a facial recognition search of the store's surveillance-camera footage that identified him as the thief. Prosecutors dropped the case less than two weeks later, saying officers had relied on insufficient evidence. Police Chief James Craig later apologized for what he called "shoddy" investigative work. Williams, who said he had been driving home from work when the 2018 theft had occurred, was interrogated by detectives and held in custody for 30 hours before his release. Williams's case sparked a public outcry about the fast-growing use of a technology that research has shown often misidentifies people of color. His lawsuit is at least the third in the brought by Black men in the United States to raise doubts about the software's accuracy.