LaDonna Crutchfield, a 37-year-old Black woman, was lying on her bed, reading to her 5-year-old daughter, when police began pounding on her door.
Crutchfield’s niece opened the door and encountered six Detroit police officers who demanded to speak to her aunt.
When Crutchfield walked to the door to see what they wanted, they ordered her to step outside and arrested her, claiming they had a warrant over a missed court date.
It was only after she was sitting in the back of a patrol car with her hands cuffed behind her back that she realized she was being arrested on a charge of assault to commit murder after police confused her for another Black woman. She ended up spending eight hours in jail before she was released.
Turns out, police used a facial recognition database which is part of their Green Light Project which matched Crutchfield’s face to the face of another Black woman who was the real suspect in the alleged crime, according to a federal lawsuit filed Friday against the Detroit Police Department. The complaint accuses police of several violations, including false arrest and assault and battery.
However, Detroit police claim her false arrest was not a result of facial recognition software but their own incompetence.
“This case has nothing to do with facial (recognition),” Assistant Detroit Police Chief Charles Fitzgerald told Fox 2.
“There was an investigation done,” Fitzgerald continued. “The investigation led back to a partial plate. It was a house on the east side. That east side home let us back to our plaintiff. When they compare the image they got from a video just an image. They didn’t do any facial rec. It led us to this individual.”
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