PASSAGE OF THE DAY: "As the case has unfolded, court documents and interviews have revealed a lack of oversight, regulations and training around a highly controversial piece of surveillance technology. “This case represents the critical need for sound defense representation and constitutionally sound police training and investigations,” said Ayesha Bell-Hardaway, the director of Case Western Reserve University’s Social Justice Institute and a former member of the monitoring team overseeing the reform of Cleveland police. The company that produced the facial recognition report, Clearview AI, has been used in hundreds of law enforcement investigations throughout Ohio and has faced lawsuits over privacy violations. Not only does Cleveland lack a policy governing the use of artificial intelligence, Ohio lawmakers also have failed to set standards for how police use the tool to investigate crimes. “It’s the wild, wild west in Ohio,” said Gary Daniels, a lobbyist for the American Civil Liberties Union. The lack of state regulation of how law enforcement uses advanced technologies – no laws similarly govern the use of drones or license plate readers – means it is essentially up to agencies how they use the tools."
----------------------------------------------------------------
STORY: "Cleveland police used AI to justify a search warrant: It has derailed a murder case," by Reporter Lucus Daprile, published by Cleveland.com, on Hannuary 25, 2025. (Lucas Daprile is a news reporter and advice columnist for cleveland.com and the Plain Dealer. As the Stimulus Watch reporter, his coverage primarily focuses on how local governments are spending their share of American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) dollars.)
PHOTO CAPTION:"Judge Richard McMonagle threw out evidence in a murder case, claiming Cleveland police used AI facial recognition without detailing it in a search warrant affidavit.
GIST:" A jury may never see the gun that authorities say was used to kill Blake Story last year.
That’s because Cleveland police used a facial recognition program – one that explicitly says its results are not admissible in court – to obtain a search warrant, according to court documents.
The search turned up what police say is the murder weapon in the suspect’s home. But a Cuyahoga County judge tossed that evidence after siding with defense attorneys who argued that the search warrant affidavit was misleading and relied on inadmissible evidence.
If an appeals court upholds the judge’s ruling to suppress the evidence, prosecutors acknowledge their case is likely lost.
“(The judge’s decision) so weakened the state’s case as to have destroyed any reasonable possibility of effectively prosecuting the charge,” Cuyahoga County prosecutors wrote in court documents seeking an appeal.
If the case is dismissed or if the suspect is acquitted, it seems unlikely Story’s family will see justice. There was only one suspect listed in the police report.
Story’s father, Carlton, told cleveland.com and The Plain Dealer he is confident the prosecutor’s office will be able to win the case. He didn’t want to comment on the investigation, but he remembers his son, a graduate of Garrett Morgan School of Engineering and Innovation, as a soft-spoken animal lover who was hoping to go to veterinary school.
As the case has unfolded, court documents and interviews have revealed a lack of oversight, regulations and training around a highly controversial piece of surveillance technology.
“This case represents the critical need for sound defense representation and constitutionally sound police training and investigations,” said Ayesha Bell-Hardaway, the director of Case Western Reserve University’s Social Justice Institute and a former member of the monitoring team overseeing the reform of Cleveland police.
The company that produced the facial recognition report, Clearview AI, has been used in hundreds of law enforcement investigations throughout Ohio and has faced lawsuits over privacy violations.
Not only does Cleveland lack a policy governing the use of artificial intelligence, Ohio lawmakers also have failed to set standards for how police use the tool to investigate crimes.
“It’s the wild, wild west in Ohio,” said Gary Daniels, a lobbyist for the American Civil Liberties Union.
The lack of state regulation of how law enforcement uses advanced technologies – no laws similarly govern the use of drones or license plate readers – means it is essentially up to agencies how they use the tools.
The case
On the evening of Feb. 14, 2024, Story, 33, was walking on East 152nd Street when a man approached him from behind, robbed him and shot him twice before running away.
Seriously wounded, Story walked the last mile to his home on School Street. His father found him dead in the bathtub the next day.
For the first five days of the investigation, Cleveland police had no suspects. Though the murder was captured on a surveillance camera, the images weren’t clear enough for police to identify anyone.
On Feb. 20, officers watched a surveillance camera that recorded a man later identified as Qeyeon Tolbert leave his apartment on East 152nd Street, which is roughly a block from where the murder happened.
Tolbert, 23, walked to a nearby convenience store, and a different surveillance camera captured a shot of his face while he was at the register, according to court records. Police, monitoring the neighborhood through real-time street cameras, thought Tolbert looked like the shooter, so they went to the convenience store and got a copy of the surveillance video.
Cleveland police asked the Northeast Ohio Regional Fusion Center, an interagency law enforcement intelligence group, to identify the person at the convenience store. At that point, police didn’t have a name for Tolbert, according to court documents.
The fusion center ran an AI-powered facial recognition search through Clearview AI and emailed its findings to Cleveland police, according to the documents.
That AI report turned up eight photos, two of which were pictures of Tolbert. Other photos included Instagram and YouTube pages now listed as private, a social media post of a man riding a bicycle behind a statue in Minneapolis and another YouTube video of several people tasting Buffalo Wild Wings.
The fusion center’s report included Tolbert’s name, arrest record, Social Security number and other information, and it noted he was the most likely match for the person in the convenience store.
Police thought Tolbert was a strong suspect, according to court records and testimony. The shooter, captured on surveillance video, stopped in Tolbert’s driveway just before the slaying, and he was seen running toward and away from Tolbert’s apartment immediately after the killing, records and testimony indicate.
Police believed the shooter looked like Tolbert because he had the same “build, hair style, clothing and walking characteristics,” Detective Michael Legg testified during a hearing on the search warrant.
Homicide detectives brought an affidavit to Cuyahoga County Common Pleas Judge Joan Synenberg to get a search warrant of Tolbert’s house on East 152nd Street.
A judge must review the document to determine whether police have information on the place to be searched, the reasons needed for the search and whether there is probable cause that a person linked to that location committed a crime.
The affidavit, signed by Legg, a 28-year veteran of Cleveland police, said the fusion center had identified Tolbert as a suspect.
Legg’s affidavit did not disclose that police used facial recognition as part of their identification. He failed to say that Clearview AI issues a disclaimer saying its facial recognition reports are not admissible in court, according to testimony.
He also did not indicate that the facial recognition report returned several photos of people other than Tolbert. The affidavit simply says the fusion center matched Tolbert to “the unidentified male suspect, based on recovered surveillance video.” The filing adds that police also conducted interviews in the case, but it does not say who was contacted or the information provided.
Synenberg signed the document on Feb. 20.
The next day, police searched Tolbert’s apartment and found a Taurus G3 handgun, among other evidence, according to court records.
Tolbert’s attorneys, Daniel Tirfagnehu and Brian Fallon, argued Legg’s affidavit supporting the search warrant was based on evidence that’s not admissible in court. They filed a motion to suppress the evidence.
“It really wasn’t a positive identification,” Tirfagnehu told cleveland.com and The Plain Dealer. “The search warrant affidavit submitted by the detective was misleading.”
During a hearing on whether to throw out the results of the search warrant, Christine Vacha, an assistant county prosecutor, argued police did not rely solely on artificial intelligence.
Police also did their due diligence, Legg argued, by running the affidavit by Mary McGrath, a longtime assistant county prosecutor, before submitting it to the judge.
Once indicted, Tolbert went before Judge Richard McMonagle, a retired jurist handling the docket of Tim McCormick, who is out of the office.
At a Jan. 9 hearing, McMonagle agreed with defense attorneys, saying the AI identification of Tolbert was akin to an anonymous informant, which is not enough to establish probable cause.
Prosecutors have appealed McMonagle’s ruling to the 8th Ohio District Court of Appeals. The prosecutor’s office declined to comment, citing the ongoing case.
Cleveland.com and The Plain Dealer reached out to Clearview AI seeking comment. Synenberg declined to comment.
Clearview
Clearview AI, a Delaware-based technology company, boasts that its facial recognition programs can be used to fight child exploitation, investigate crimes, exonerate the innocent and even identify Russian spies working in Ukraine, according to its website.
In June, it settled federal lawsuits from across the country that alleged the company violated millions of residents’ privacy rights.
“Clearview defendants did not develop their technology out of a desire for a safer society,” a lawsuit states. “Rather, they developed their technology to invade the privacy of the American public for their own profit.”
A settlement agreement is pending.
For law enforcement, the company offers a disclaimer on its use.
A statement at the bottom of the facial recognition report submitted by the Northeast Ohio fusion center, one that’s repeated on the company’s website, reads, in part: “These search results are not intended or permitted to be used as admissible evidence in a court of law or any court filing.”
For Fallon, one of Tolbert’s defense attorneys, that disclaimer speaks volumes.
“That’s kind of a big deal,” Fallon said. “It means it’s not that reliable.”
Cleveland is not the first law enforcement agency in the state to use Clearview AI as an investigative tool. Since August 2022, the Ohio Bureau of Criminal Investigation has used Clearview AI in 199 investigations, according to records from the Ohio attorney general’s office.
In December 2022, the state bureau finalized a policy to govern how agents use the software. The second paragraph of that policy includes the following: “Facial recognition is an investigative tool only and does not establish probable cause to obtain an arrest warrant without further investigation.”
The agency’s policy places limits on how it can be used. Facial recognition searches can only be done for law enforcement purposes. The policy limits the technology access to trained employees who are given unique credentials before every search.
Those who want to conduct facial recognition searches must fill out a specialized form. An employee who specializes in the software conducts monthly audits of each facial recognition search, according to the policy.
Accountability
Unlike the state, Cleveland has no such policy.
Legg, the detective who signed the affidavit supporting the search warrant for Tolbert’s apartment, testified during the Jan. 9 hearing that he had never been trained in using facial recognition technology and was unaware of any city policy governing the issue.
Despite that, the Tolbert case was not the first time Cleveland police have received AI-powered facial recognition reports from the fusion center, Legg testified.
As for the disclaimer at the bottom of the facial recognition report, Legg testified he never read it and didn’t feel the need to because police don’t rely solely on AI for investigations.
Vesna Piscitello, a Cleveland police employee who works in the real-time crime center investigating homicides, obtained the facial recognition report from the fusion center in the Tolbert case.
She also testified that she received no training on facial recognition and wasn’t aware of any city policies relating to the technology.
Cleveland.com and The Plain Dealer asked a spokesman for Mayor Justin Bibb whether the administration was aware the department used artificial intelligence and if any policies govern its use.
In response, spokesman Tyler Sinclair said, “The mayor believes in the power of utilizing technology in a constitutional manner to bring criminals to justice.”
Sinclair directed questions about policy governing AI usage to the fusion center. When a reporter contacted the fusion center for comment, an employee directed him to Cleveland officials.
Cleveland police also did not comment on the department’s use of artificial intelligence.
The issue doesn’t begin and end with a local police department. Synenberg, who approved the search warrant, also has an obligation to ensure probable cause was met before signing the search warrant, said Bell-Hardaway, the Case Western Reserve University professor.
The fact that McMonagle, a longtime judge, threw out the evidence “illustrates the essential function of why you have to have an independent arbiter,” she said.
For Carlton Story, the case means so much more. It brings up memories how how his soft-spoken son was killed while just trying to walk home.
“He didn’t bother anybody. He wasn’t rude to anybody. He minded his own business,” he said of his son.""
The entire story can be read at:
PUBLISHER'S NOTE: I am monitoring this case/issue/resource. 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.
SEE BREAKDOWN OF SOME OF THE ON-GOING INTERNATIONAL CASES (OUTSIDE OF THE CONTINENTAL USA) THAT I AM FOLLOWING ON THIS BLOG, AT THE LINK BELOW: HL:
https://www.blogger.com/blog/post/edit/120008354894645705/4704913685758792985
———————————————————————————————
FINAL WORD: (Applicable to all of our wrongful conviction cases): "Whenever there is a wrongful conviction, it exposes errors in our criminal legal system, and we hope that this case — and lessons from it — can prevent future injustices."
Lawyer Radha Natarajan:
Executive Director: New England Innocence Project;
—————————————————————————————————
FINAL, FINAL WORD: "Since its inception, the Innocence Project has pushed the criminal legal system to confront and correct the laws and policies that cause and contribute to wrongful convictions. They never shied away from the hard cases — the ones involving eyewitness identifications, confessions, and bite marks. Instead, in the course of presenting scientific evidence of innocence, they've exposed the unreliability of evidence that was, for centuries, deemed untouchable." So true!
Christina Swarns: Executive Director: The Innocence Project;
