A Georgia man was falsely arrested in November after Louisiana officers used a facial recognition tool to identify him as a fugitive, according to The Associated Press. Significant differences in facial features and weight led to the man being freed. However, this incident points to another way in which officers falsely identify Black suspects.
Sometimes when the automatic sink refuses to work or iPhone face recognition won’t unlock, it reminds us that technology was designed to recognize white skin. Now, imagine the same flaw in a tool used to arrest people for a crime. Twenty-eight year old Randall Reid fell victim to this bug. AP reports Reid was sent to jail in Dekalb County on a fugitive warrant for a purse theft that happened in Jefferson Parish Louisiana.
‘What is Jefferson Parish?’” Reid said via Nola.com. “I have never been to Louisiana a day in my life. Then they told me it was for theft. So not only have I not been to Louisiana, I also don’t steal.”
Reid’s mole on his face and the 40-pound difference between him and the real thief caught on surveillance cam caused the Jefferson Parish sheriff to rescind the warrant, per Reid’s attorney, Tommy Calogero.
This scenario isn’t foreign. There was once a Black man who was arrested on the warrant of a white man because they had the same name. However, the racial disparities in technology need to be addressed before being launched in communities of color. In 2020, IBM, Amazon and Microsoft paused the sale of their facial recognition devices to the police in acknowledgement that their technology enforced police abuse in Black communities, per the ACLU. San Francisco and several cities in Massachusetts have banned facial recognition technology from being used by police departments for the same reason, per WBUR.
Source: Facial Recognition Leads Louisiana Cops to Arrest of Innocent Man
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