USA TODAY International Edition
Detroit’s facial recognition software got arrest wrong
Spotlight returns to controversial technology
The high- profile case of a Black man wrongly arrested this year wasn’t the first misidentification linked to controversial facial recognition technology used by Detroit police, the Free Press has learned.
Last year, a 25- year- old Detroit man was wrongly accused of a felony for supposedly reaching into a teacher’s vehicle, grabbing a cellphone and throwing it, cracking the screen and breaking the case.
Detroit police used facial recognition technology in that investigation, too.
It identified Michael Oliver as an investigative lead. After that hit, the teacher whose phone was snatched from his hands identified Oliver in a photo lineup as the person responsible.
Oliver was charged with a felony count of larceny in the May 2019 incident on West Warren Avenue in Detroit.
Oliver told his attorney he didn’t do it. Evidence in the case supported him.
Controversy over law enforcement using facial recognition technology is not new, nor is it confined to Detroit. But recent uprisings around the country in response to racial injustice in the wake of the death of George Floyd have again brought criticism of the technology to the forefront.
In Detroit, where police started using facial recognition software as an investigative tool in 2017, protesters have demanded the city stop using it, saying the error rate is high when used to identify people of color.
The City Council, which will consider extending a software contract to help pay for it, has been urged to vote no by some residents. Detroit’s civilian Board of Police Commissioners also has been discussing the department’s use of technology.
In the cellphone case, according to transcribed testimony, the teacher called 911 as he watched a group of students fighting. One student had a baseball bat and others were wrestling on the ground. The teacher used his cellphone to film the incident. The phone was recording when a young man reached into the teacher’s car and snatched the phone.
Oliver said the first thing that crossed his mind when his lawyer showed him the footage: “It wasn’t me.”
Oliver has tattoos up and down his arms. Those markings weren’t visible on the person captured on video. Oliver’s attorney, Patrick Nyenhuis, also noticed differences in the hairstyle and body type between the person in the video and his client, he said.
“It was obvious they had the wrong person.” Nyenhuis told the Free Press.
He took his concerns and pictures of his client to Wayne County assistant prosecutor Brian Surma, a supervisor in the office. Surma and the teacher reviewed photographs, determined Oliver was misidentified and both agreed the case should be dismissed immediately, a court transcript shows.
“We are convinced that there was a misidentification here,” Surma told a judge in September.
The case was tossed.
“I’m glad it’s all over,” Oliver told the Free Press this month.
Oliver, now 26, said he was nervous as his case proceeded last year because people still get convicted for crimes they didn’t commit.
He questioned how his face ever got connected to the case.
During the investigation, police captured an image from the cellphone video, sent it for facial recognition and the photo came back to Oliver, the police report said.
After Oliver was singled out, a picture of his face was included in a photo lineup of possible suspects that was presented to the teacher.
A second person, a student, was also captured in the video with the suspect.
The officer in charge of the case testified that he didn’t interview that person, though he’d been given that student’s name.
Police investigated Oliver’s case prior to a new policy governing the use of facial recognition software. It includes stricter rules on when Detroit police can use it. The technology is now used only as a tool to help solve violent felonies, Detroit police have said.
A spokesman for the department said Wednesday that he was looking into questions from the Free Press about Oliver’s case.
The Wayne County Prosecutor’s Office also now has more stringent protocol in place for facial recognition cases.
Evidence in Oliver’s case wasn’t reviewed by a supervisor in the prosecutor’s office prior to him being charged, spokeswoman Maria Miller said in an email.
Current protocol requires a supervisor review all evidence in a facial recognition case prior to a charging decision.
There also must be other evidence that corroborates the allegations in order to charge someone.
The prosecutor’s office is taking additional steps, Miller said. It will now be required that facial recognition cases be submitted to prosecutor Kym Worthy — the highest- ranking person in the office — for approval if an assistant prosecuting attorney and supervisor determine charges should be authorized.
Last week, Black Democrats in the Michigan House of Representatives called for a ban on the technology.
Detroit police chief James Craig, who is Black, has said he is a strong believer in facial recognition software. Last summer, he said police had used the technology about 500 times, then moved on to the next phase of investigation only 30% of the time.