The shoplifting incident occurred in October 2018 but it wasn’t until March 2019 that the police uploaded the security camera images to the state image-recognition system but the police still waited until the following January to arrest Williams. Unless there was something special about that date in October, there is no way for anyone to remember what they might have been doing on a particular day 15 months previously. Though, as it turns out, the NPR report states that the police did not even try to ascertain whether or not he had an alibi.
Also, after 15 months, there is virtually no chance that any eye-witness (such as the security guard who picked Williams out of a line-up) would be able to recall what the suspect looked like with any degree of certainty or accuracy.
This WUSF article [1] includes a photo of the actual “Investigative Lead Report” and the original image is far too dark for a anyone (human or algorithm) to recognise the person. It’s possible that the original is better quality and better detail can be discerned by applying image-processing filters – but it still looks like a very noisy source.
That same “Investigative Lead Report” also clearly states that “This document is not a positive identification … and is not probable cause to arrest. Further investigation is needed to develop probable cause of arrest”.
The New York Times article [2] states that this facial recognition technology that the Michigan tax-payer has paid millions of dollars for is known to be biased and that the vendors do “not formally measure the systems’ accuracy or bias”.
Finally, the original NPR article states that
> "Most of the time, people who are arrested using face recognition are not told face recognition was used to arrest them," said Jameson Spivack
[1] https://www.wusf.org/the-computer-got-it-wrong-how-facial-re...
[2] https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/24/technology/facial-recogni...
Many of these cops are earning $200k plus annually! Our law enforcement system is ridiculous and needs an overhaul.