The Daily Populous Thursday December 31st, 2020 morning edition
Authored by wsj.com and submitted by Gari_305

A New Jersey man is suing local authorities who he says wrongly arrested him based on a false facial-recognition match, in a case that has fueled debate over the accuracy of the fast-emerging technology.

The man, 33-year-old Nijeer Parks, spent more than a week in jail after police detained him in February 2019 on charges of shoplifting, assault and drug possession related to a Jan. 26 incident that year at a Hampton Inn hotel in Woodbridge, N.J., according to a complaint filed in New Jersey Superior Court.

The criminal case was dismissed in November 2019, according to a court official in Middlesex County, where Woodbridge is located. Mr. Parks is now seeking unspecified damages, according to the complaint, over allegations including false arrest, civil-rights violations and emotional distress.

Police in January 2019 submitted for facial-recognition analysis to investigators in New Jersey and New York the picture from a driver’s license they had collected from the suspect, according to a police report. The suspect later fled the crime scene. Authorities from two other departments responded that they had a “high profile comparison” to Mr. Parks, according to the report, which led Woodbridge police to seek and obtain an arrest warrant.

Woodbridge police and prosecutors in Middlesex County didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment. New York state police officials, whom the Woodbridge police sent photographs for facial-recognition comparison, said their records showed they didn’t provide any leads in the case. The New Jersey state police also said its information-sharing and intelligence unit didn’t complete a facial recognition identification.

kevoizjawesome on December 30th, 2020 at 15:08 UTC »

If police falsely arrested me and jailed me for a week, I wouldn't have a job when I got out. This is fucked.

negao360 on December 30th, 2020 at 14:25 UTC »

Hoping u/dominisi will not be upset by this, I’d like to first pay homage to them, and post their analysis of this situation(based on their experience in the field):

“All Facial Rec software is supposed to do is give a lead, and not be used as the basis for prosecution/arrest. This is on the police officers who decided to use it in this way.

Edit: This blew up. Some backstory.

I used to work for law enforcement as an Intelligence Analyst who used Facial Rec software for the very purpose of trying to generate leads off of shitty photos of surveillance videos. It was ALWAYS supposed to be used as only a lead, and was not allowed to be used to arrest somebody just off of a "Probable" match.

And that's all it ever was, probable, I never would, and was never allowed to call it a "match" because you couldn't ever guarantee it. And out of thousands and thousands of these I did, I can only recall maybe 2 or 3 that I felt confident enough in to pass along as a "probable match".

Edit2:

Just to clear up a common thing I'm seeing. When you put in a photo, it doesn't just spit back another photo and declare its a match. It gives you back a collage of dozens of DMV photos of basically people that "look similar" its up to a human to look at that collage and try and find a probable match. The amount of times I would put in a hispanic male in his 50s and get a teenage white girl as a possible match in the collage was wayyy higher than it should have been.”

Once again, thanks goes to u/dominisi

SamohtGnir on December 30th, 2020 at 14:22 UTC »

One of the best comments on the original thread was a guy who worked in the field saying it facial recognition was only ever meant to assist and can never make a definitive match.