GIST: "Robert Williams was doing yard work with his family one afternoon last August when his daughter Julia said they needed a family meeting immediately. Once everyone was inside the house, the 7-year-old girl closed all the blinds and curtains and then told her sister and parents that she'd figured it out: Wooly Willy, a character from her toy, had stolen the watches that got her dad arrested.
“She was like ‘We need to get to the bottom of this,’” her mother Melissa says. More recently, Melissa says, Julia has said she believes people who wear shirts that say “Detroit” represent the people who arrested her father.
Williams was arrested in January 2020 for allegedly stealing five watches from a Shinola store in Detroit, after he was wrongfully identified by facial recognition software. He was among the first people known to be wrongfully accused because of the software, which is an increasingly common tool for police. Michael Oliver and Nijeer Parks were wrongly arrested in 2019 after also being misidentified by facial recognition technology.
All three cases were eventually dropped, but in Parks’ case, that took almost a year, including 10 days in jail. The cases shared some commonalities. Oliver and Parks both had prior criminal records. Oliver and Williams were investigated by the same Detroit detective. All three men are fathers, and all three are Black. “It’s not a coincidence,” Parks says.
Law enforcement in nearly every US state now has access to facial recognition software. The Georgetown Law Center on Privacy and Technology says images of one in two US adults are in facial recognition databases used to identify criminal suspects. Critics say police rely too heavily on the technology, particularly since research has shown it misidentifies women and people of color more often than white men. Yet in most of the US, neither police nor prosecutors are required to tell people accused of crimes if facial recognition has played a role in an investigation.
WIRED spoke with Williams, Oliver, and Parks to better understand how the arrests changed their lives and the lives of people around them. Each says the fallout extended beyond the time they spent in jail to affect relationships with family, friends, coworkers, and neighbors.
The three men knew relatively little about facial recognition before their arrests, but today they want to ban—or at least suspend—its use in criminal investigations.
When Williams was arrested, he told Melissa, Julia, and his 4-year-old daughter Rosie that he’d be right back, but he was held by police for 30 hours. Julia still cries when she sees video of her dad being arrested on their front lawn. Her parents wonder how much the experience affected her.
In testimony before Congress last summer, Williams said he and his wife considered getting Julia a therapist, and that thought bubbled up again late last year amid worry that the arrest was still top of mind for her. Her parents said Julia still seems worried that police will take her father away again.
“I don’t think she knows that nothing else is going to happen to me about this case,” Williams says. “I can see how that stuck with her, but I don’t know how to look at it from a 7-year-old’s perspective.”
Accused of Stealing from a Hotel Gift Shop
Parks, who is now 34, was accused of shoplifting snacks and candy from a Hampton Inn gift shop in Woodbridge, New Jersey in January 2019. According to police reports, the shoplifter left a fake Tennessee driver’s license at the scene and nearly hit a police officer with a car while evading arrest. The photo from the fake ID was sent to a real-time crime center, which used a facial recognition system to identify Parks as a “high-profile” match. Days later, after police went to his grandmother’s home looking for him, Parks walked into a police station and attempted to clear his name. He was arrested instead.
Three days after his arrest, Parks appeared in court for the first time. When he wasn’t released, he began to wonder if he would spend years behind bars. He didn’t know how much time he faced, but Parks figured the charges of assault, theft, and eluding arrest could mean a long sentence; according to the complaint, the maximum sentence could have been 25 years.
As Parks considered his options, his previous conviction for drug-related charges weighed heavily. “That’s when it started hitting me, like a plea deal might not be bad even if I didn’t do it,” he says, “because with a trial there’s more [time], and me being a convicted felon, my time is doubled.”
Defense attorneys and legal experts say some people wrongly accused by facial recognition agree to plea deals, suggesting wrongful arrests are more common than generally realized.
Parks spent 10 days in the Middlesex County Corrections Center after his arrest. About six months later, he got a new phone, and while going through old photos, he found a screenshot of a receipt for a Western Union money transfer to his fiancee at roughly the same time as the hotel shoplifting. The Western Union was in Paterson, New Jersey, 30 miles from the hotel, proving he didn’t commit the crime.
Still, it took several more months before the charges were dropped. Parks calls himself lucky. “I could be talking to you from prison right now trying to explain my innocence,” he says. “I just don’t want that to happen to anybody else.”
In March 2021, Parks filed suit in federal court in New Jersey against the director of the Woodbridge Police Department, other local officials, and Idemia, maker of the facial recognition system that identified him, alleging false arrest, false imprisonment, violation of his rights against improper search and seizure, and cruel and unusual punishment. The lawsuit alleges that police didn’t use traditional investigative techniques, such as subjecting a photo of Parks to an in-person or photo lineup for witnesses.
The lawsuit also alleges that police failed to obtain DNA or fingerprint evidence left at the scene by the suspect that could have eliminated Parks as a suspect. The lawsuit seeks lost wages and emotional damages. A trial date has not been set.
After his arrest, Parks didn’t tell many people, in part because of his prior record. “When you’re trying to do the right thing and change and do things differently and then something like that happens, people look at you like ‘Did you really do it?’” he says.
A small group of close family and friends knew about his ordeal, and for Parks, the false accusation divided those closest to him into two groups: people who stood by him after the arrest, and family and friends who didn’t want to be around him. In part because of the arrest, Parks says he’s no longer with his fiancée.
“Some people came back and apologized and said ‘It looked like you and so you know I just took it for what it was,’” he says. “Sometimes things happen.”
Parks says he didn’t discuss the arrest with his 10-year-old son while he fought the case, but they discussed it after watching a 60 Minutes segment that aired in May 2021 on facial recognition use in criminal investigations. His son questioned why his father was arrested, and Parks said they discussed how Black men have to act differently around police, a rite of passage for Black families sometimes referred to as The Talk. It was the first time they had that type of conversation.
“I said as Black men there’s certain things we can’t do in police presence,” Parks said.
In response to the lawsuit, the mayor of Woodbridge, director of the Woodbridge Police Department, and officers involved in the case denied allegations. A lawyer representing the Woodbridge County Corrections Department also denied allegations that Parks was subject to excessive force.
Facial recognition manufacturer Idemia did not respond to comment about the accusation of malice or shocking disregard that merit awarding punitive damages to Parks.
The Broken Smartphone
Oliver, 28, says his biggest fear after his arrest was going to trial and losing. He was arrested in Ferndale, Michigan, during a traffic stop in July 2019, two months after Detroit police issued a warrant for his arrest for allegedly grabbing a smartphone from a teacher recording a fight outside a school and throwing it on the ground. Oliver was at work when the crime occurred. As a result of the arrest, Oliver says, he lost his job painting car parts and it took about a year for his life to return to normal.
“I’ve got a son, I’ve got my family, I’ve got my own little house, paying all my bills, so once I got arrested and I lost my job, it was like everything fell, like everything went down the drain,” Oliver says.
Oliver was identified by facial recognition software based on a screenshot shared with police from the video by the teacher. The teacher initially identified a former student as the suspect but later picked Oliver from a photo lineup. But Oliver's public defender, Patrick Nyenhuis, told Detroit’s WXYZ TV that he realized quickly when he met Oliver at a pretrial hearing that Oliver doesn’t resemble the man in the video. Oliver has several tattoos, while the person in the video has no visible tattoos. Wayne County prosecutors ultimately agreed and dropped the charges.
“I’ve got a son, I’ve got my family, I’ve got my own little house, paying all my bills, so once I got arrested and I lost my job, it was like everything fell, like everything went down the drain.”
MICHAEL OLIVER
Nyenhuis said the detective investigating the case appeared to take shortcuts, including failing to question Oliver or review a video of the incident before his arrest.
In October 2020, Oliver sued the city of Detroit and Detective Donald Bussa in federal court in Michigan seeking damages for emotional distress and economic loss. The suit alleges Bussa did not accurately represent facts in the warrant, including the teacher’s initial identification of a former student, and that the detective didn’t contact multiple witnesses or the school where the fight took place.
In the suit, Oliver asks for an order barring Detroit police from using facial recognition technology until disparities are resolved in how the technology performs on people of different races, ethnicities, and skin tones. If a facial recognition program is used in an investigation, the lawsuit asks that investigating officers be required to inform judges reviewing arrest warrants that the quality of an image can impact the accuracy of its results.
In court filings, Patrick Cunningham, a lawyer representing Bussa and the city of Detroit, denied all allegations in Oliver’s lawsuit, including that investigators relied on facial recognition and that Oliver was falsely arrested.
Bussa, the detective in the Oliver case, also investigated the crime that led to Williams’ arrest. Lawyers representing Oliver and Williams say what happened to their clients reflects both an overreliance on facial recognition and poor investigative work.
Court documents state that discovery in the case will continue until June. Oliver’s attorney, David Robinson, wants police to reveal how many images the facial recognition program returned besides Oliver’s. He’s also seeking records about the technology’s accuracy in identifying people of color in a city where the majority of people are Black or brown.
Stolen Watches and a Videotape
Williams, 43, was accused of stealing $3,600 in watches from a Shinola store. He spent 30 hours in the Detroit Detention Center in a cell with a dozen other people. A live Instagram video of him singing slow jams while 50 miles away around the time of the theft proved he didn’t commit the crime, and charges against him were dropped two months after his arrest.
But that wasn’t the end of the story for the Williams family. At home, the arrest led to games of cops and robbers starring Robert as the robber for a few months and affected his relationship with neighbors. Williams had been arrested in the afternoon on his front lawn in full view of his neighbors. Some neighbors didn’t realize what had occurred until stories about his arrest began to emerge months later. Conversations with other neighbors came more than a year later, after a 60 Minutes interview.
Williams has had multiple strokes since his arrest and wonders whether they are related to stress associated with the case or the deaths of two siblings since then. Still, he thinks of himself as lucky when he considers what might have happened if police had charged him with a more serious crime than theft and he had felt pressured to take a plea deal.
“Nijeer Parks said he was ready to take a plea, and I’m thinking what would I have done if I was in a pinch and it would’ve been just cheaper for me to take a probation charge than to try and fight a case that I know I wasn't guilty of,” he says.
In April, Williams filed a suit in federal court in Michigan against former police chief James Craig, the city of Detroit, and Bussa. The suit claims Bussa didn’t investigate alibis for Oliver or Williams and relied entirely on facial recognition software.
In court filings, Williams alleges that Bussa was told by a Shinola representative that the company doesn’t like its employees to appear in court and that a store manager refused to participate. So Bussa showed six photos to a security guard who wasn’t at the store on the day of the theft, the filings say, and the guard identified Williams. It’s not known whether the other photos were the product of facial recognition technology.
“The technology got relied on so heavily that they didn't even do any investigative work to find the person,” Williams says. “Nobody ever asked me from any police department ‘Where were you on the day of the crime?’”
“It's something that’s still our everyday now and it's just crazy how it came out of nowhere and it's a part of us now.”
MELISSA WILLIAMS
Shannon Washburn, CEO of Shinola, says the company is “dismayed” at Williams’ treatment, adding “none of our employees chose to participate in the case.”
Craig later told the Detroit Board of Police Commissioners that police became aware of the mistake four days after Williams’ arrest, when Bussa reviewed security camera footage and realized that the watch thief was a different person. Craig said Bussa then notified prosecutors.
Detroit police did not respond to requests for comment. In a court filing, a lawyer representing Craig, Bussa, and the city of Detroit denied all the allegations in Williams’ suit.
In July 2019, Craig told the police commissioners that police would never use facial recognition identification as the sole reason for an arrest. Less than a week later, Oliver was arrested. In September, the commissioners adopted a policy instructing officers to use the technology only for investigations involving home invasions or violent crimes, like homicides. The board also made violations of the policy a fireable offense. Williams was arrested four months later for shoplifting.
The policy includes requirements for random audits and annual reports reviewing use of the technology. A coalition of civil rights and community groups, including the Arab-American Civil Rights League and the ACLU of Michigan, opposed the new policy due to concerns that the tech will disproportionately impact immigrants and communities of color.
Craig, who is now a leading Republican candidate for Michigan governor, has acknowledged that the system identifies the wrong person more than 90 percent of the time. After the Williams arrest came to light, Craig apologized and told the board of police commissioners that the false arrest was the result of “sloppy, sloppy investigative work” and poor management by a supervisor, not flaws in facial recognition or policy. He also said the facial recognition searches that led to accusations against Oliver and Williams took place before police adopted the policy governing use of the technology.
After news of Williams’ arrest became public, Wayne County prosecutor Kym Worthy apologized in a statement and said her office declined to adopt Craig’s proposed facial recognition policy, citing studies that the technology can be especially inaccurate for people of color. As a result of what happened to Oliver and Williams, Worthy says both she and a prosecuting attorney must now approve any charges based on facial recognition before they are filed.
Williams says he probably would have supported using facial recognition in criminal investigations before his arrest, but now he supports a moratorium. Tests by the National Institute for Standards and Technology and researchers like Joy Buolamwini demonstrate that software from many companies selling facial recognition has a history of misidentifying young girls with dark skin, like his daughters. Studies show facial recognition systems are also less accurate at recognizing other groups, including people of Asian descent or those who do not conform to gender norms.
Williams has asked lawmakers in Detroit and Washington, DC, to ban or delay use of the technology. Melissa Williams says she and her husband regularly attend meetings and talk to journalists. Though Williams testified before a congressional committee, he was denied opportunities to speak at length at meetings of the Detroit City Council and Detroit Board of Police Commissioners.
“It’s definitely changed our life,” Melissa Williams says. “It's something that’s still our everyday now, and it's just crazy how it came out of nowhere and it's a part of us now.”
Williams’ lawyer, ACLU senior staff attorney Phil Mayor, says Williams waited nearly a year to file a lawsuit because his primary goal was to get the city to stop using the technology.
However, in September 2020 the Detroit City Council renewed a facial recognition contract for two years with DataWorks Plus, a South Carolina-based company that also provides facial recognition services to the New York Police Department, where police also faced multiple accusations that their use of facial recognition led to false arrests.
Other efforts to change police practices in Detroit have hit obstacles. In August, voters rejected a ballot measure that would have revised the city’s charter to, among other things, increase public oversight of surveillance technology contracts."
The entire story can be read at:
PUBLISHER'S NOTE: I am monitoring this case/issue. Keep your eye on the Charles Smith Blog for reports on developments. The Toronto Star, my previous employer for more than twenty incredible years, has put considerable effort into exposing the harm caused by Dr. Charles Smith and his protectors - and into pushing for reform of Ontario's forensic pediatric pathology system. The Star has a "topic" section which focuses on recent stories related to Dr. Charles Smith. It can be found at: http://www.thestar.com/topic/charlessmith. Information on "The Charles Smith Blog Award"- and its nomination process - can be found at: http://smithforensic.blogspot.com/2011/05/charles-smith-blog-award-nominations.html Please send any comments or information on other cases and issues of interest to the readers of this blog to: hlevy15@gmail.com. Harold Levy: Publisher: The Charles Smith Blog;
