Pregnant Black Woman The Latest Victim Of Detroit PD Facial Recognition False Positive
from the getting-it-wrong-as-pattern-and-practice dept
Facial recognition tech is faulty. It’s an unavoidable fact, especially when it comes to women and minorities. No matter how good the tech, the potential for false positives and negatives remains. And pre-existing biases are amplified by things the tech simply can’t do well: reliably identify people who aren’t white and male.
Detroit law enforcement should be well aware of the tech’s shortcomings. After all, it’s already been involved in multiple bogus arrests based on nothing more than conclusions drawn by admittedly faulty tech.
The Detroit PD has earned itself another PR black eye (and civil rights lawsuit) by deciding whatever the AI spits out is actionable, despite being shown otherwise on multiple occasions. Here’s Kashmir Hill with the report on the PD’s latest debacle for the New York Times:
Porcha Woodruff was getting her two daughters ready for school when six police officers showed up at her door in Detroit. They asked her to step outside because she was under arrest for robbery and carjacking.
“Are you kidding?” she recalled saying to the officers. Ms. Woodruff, 32, said she gestured at her stomach to indicate how ill-equipped she was to commit such a crime: She was eight months pregnant.
Handcuffed in front of her home on a Thursday morning last February, leaving her crying children with her fiancé, Ms. Woodruff was taken to the Detroit Detention Center. She said she was held for 11 hours, questioned about a crime she said she had no knowledge of, and had her iPhone seized to be searched for evidence.
The false positive might have seemed harmless to the Detroit PD. But it wasn’t for the pregnant Woodruff. In addition to the harms listed above, Woodruff was charged with robbery and carjacking. Her bail was set at $100,000. The only good thing about this was that jailers were attentive and sent her to a hospital to be treated for dehydration.
The department’s chief, James E. White, has admitted the facts of this blown case are “concerning” and is promising to look into this. The local prosecutor, Kym Worthy, is far less repentant, insisting the “facts” of the case indicate the arrest warrant issued based on faulty tech was “appropriate.” Worthy insists this is true despite dropping the criminal charges against Woodruff a month after her false arrrest.
We’ll see how these arguments stack up in court. As is to be expected, Woodruff is suing [PDF] the Detroit PD over the rights violations instigated by its reckless use of its tech. The suit helpfully includes all the paperwork [PDF] generated by the Detroit PD prior to its decision to arrest a pregnant woman for a crime she didn’t commit.
That paperwork shows the Detroit PD relies on DataWorks Plus supplies the tech. It also shows the PD places blind trust in its decisions. It used a “six-pack” to identify the suspect. This set of six mug shots were generated by the tech and given to the crime victim, who decided an eight-year-old photo of Woodruff looked enough like the alleged criminal (despite the PD having access to Woodruff’s most recent photo from her 2021 driver’s license renewal) to give the PD all the “probable cause” it needed to arrest someone who the crime victim never described as a visibly pregnant woman.
The biggest obstacle to justice remains the judicially created notion of qualified immunity. Detroit cops are swimming in uncharted AI waters with their reliance on unproven tech. Ignorance works in their favor. The less they know, the more likely they are to convince courts their actions were “reasonable.” After all, there’s no precedent stating otherwise.
While Woodruff may be destined for a courtroom loss or, at best, a settlement tied to exculpatory statements from the city and the PD, her lawsuit will at least force federal courts to take a closer look at rights violations predicated on inaccurate software. Woodrufff will hopefully be compensated for her ordeal. But for things to change permanently, we’ll need courts to determine what is or isn’t “reasonable” when cops utilize faulty tech to generate probable cause.
Filed Under: detroit, detroit pd, facial recognition, false arrest, false positive, kym worthy, porcha woodruff
Companies: dataworks plus
Comments on “Pregnant Black Woman The Latest Victim Of Detroit PD Facial Recognition False Positive”
Who thought it was a great idea to use tech designed for identifying white men to identify a black woman?
Re:
Um… every cop EVER?
Is an eight year old picture the only evidence presented to the court in order to obtain an arrest warrant? The court does review evidence presented right? Do they even need any evidence? Apparently not.
Did the crime occur eight years ago?
Was the suspect even in the same city when said crime occurred?
Sounds like they just wanted to mess with this person and created an easy excuse.
Something to remember, if asked to identify someone in a photo lineup:
“How recent is each of these photos?”
The cops don’t care. This lawsuit doesn’t affect them in the slightest. Any settlement doesn’t come from them. Until that changes, there’s no incentive for the cops to act any differently.
this would be #? what?
this will number 4 or 5 for a false Facial recognition tech arrest! and it looks like this pig farm is a repeat offender! so little things like “pattern and practice” will thrown around in court just like the blue lies mafia likes to hand out felonies!
now we already know the city will settle this as fast as they can! the victim will most likely have the check before the ink dries! after all! certain government alphabet mafia’s wont want this to goto trial. because this will set case precedence. even if the city wins the lower court. there are too many non-profit lawyer groups that would love to run this though the appeals court and get there name on a facial recognition tech case!
then theres the great detective work done there! using a pic from the facial tech that was 8 years old when a newer pic was available! and then of coarse theres the “pregnant” woman out robbing and car jacking when she is ready to pop!
ya….. great work there blue lies mafia idiot!
So, sir, the woman who jacked your car was in her early 20s and was not 8 months pregnant? …OK, this one seems like a close match (a decade ago); hey, Joe… get that warrant ready!
Alternative take:
To make things worse she was so neglected while in custody she experienced dehydration severe enough to warrant hospitalization.
Re:
Which, as far as I’m aware, is a bad thing no matter whether she was correctly identified. It’s worse because she wasn’t but.. FFS.
This is the real problem with “AI” or “facial recognition” whatever tech. People ignoring their own eyes because a program told them something that they can pass off as being the fault of the program. Seems like some people want to continue to abuse minorities, but just needed a different exuse.
More dumb tyrants!
The tech is being used to ID people. I don’t know if it’s flawed to black people or just racest Police. What percentage is false for white people?
What the police can’t seem to figure out is that it is a TOOL. These things are wrong all the time. You shouldn’t treat anyone like a criminal based on this and throw them into a cell and a huge bail. Anyone with an IQ higher than 50 would have looked at the pregnant woman, no matter her color and go, how is this woman CarJacking anyone? Robbing, Maybe, but Carjacking?
People are also poor witnesses as was also shown here. There should have been some real proof. I’m going to assume she said where she was on such and such day and time. This should be a huge lawsuit. When will the police ever learn? I think these days, they are hiring those on the bottom of the barrow as they can’t get any smart people. Just to smart to work for the police. So we end up with clueless tyrants.
Re:
Unequivocally both.
Re:
spell checkers are real
It is just astounding they expect us to take them seriously as “professionals” in the face of events like this.
I mean… come on. One look at the woman even if the face was almost a perfect match, should’ve given them pause. Don’t they always fall back on “experience and judgement”? What kind of experience made it probable an 8month pregnant woman was a car-jacker? I really, really hope they get grilled at least a bit on that in the stand. Didn’t bother just to radio back a “are you sure”?
In a just world, all officers here (and that prosecutor!) would be mocked ruthlessly out of their jobs, it’s insanity.
“The local prosecutor, Kym Worthy, is far less repentant, insisting the “facts” of the case indicate the arrest warrant issued based on faulty tech was “appropriate.” Worthy insists this is true despite dropping the criminal charges against Woodruff a month after her false arrrest.”
Because blindly following the tech is the best course of action, the fact that the woman was heavily pregnant should not interfere with what the tech told us to do.
That whole if they didn’t have QI they would have to do better thing…
the police and the prosecutor(s) will go to any lengths to be right, to get convictions, just as they have done here. they know full well they have grossly fucked up vand have used 8+ year old photos for a line up to appear to be correct and the identifying person could only come out with ‘maybe, possibly, perhaps’! the D A automatically thinks ‘black person! definitely guilty! lets just get the evidence distorted to suit! hopefully now there’ll be a gigantic law suit that the city will have to pay out for. the down side being, the faulty software will continue to be used, the police officers wont even be sanctioned and the D A wont give a flyin’ toss! it would be a different story if those involved were to lose their jobs and, even better, if they had to contribute towards what the city has to pay out because of their monumental screw ups!
I don’t see what the issue is here.