zlacker

>>vermon+(OP)
This story is really alarming because as described, the police ran a face recognition tool based on a frame of grainy security footage and got a positive hit. Does this tool give any indication of a confidence value? Does it return a list (sorted by confidence) of possible suspects, or any other kind of feedback that would indicate even to a layperson how much uncertainty there is?

The issue of face recognition algorithms performing worse on dark faces is a major problem. But the other side of it is: would police be more hesitant to act on such fuzzy evidence if the top match appeared to be a middle-class Caucasian (i.e. someone who is more likely to take legal recourse)?

>>danso+02
> But the other side of it is: would police be more hesitant to act on such fuzzy evidence if the top match appeared to be a middle-class Caucasian (i.e. someone who is more likely to take legal recourse)?

Honest question: does race predict legal recourse when decoupled from socioeconomic status, or is this an assumption?

>>throwa+ed
Middle class black people often get harassed by police, and there is a long history of far steeper sentences for convictions for drugs used more by the black population (crack) than that used more by the white population (cocaine).

So unequal treatment based on race has quite literally been a feature of the US justice system, independent of socioeconomic status.

>>danans+Pe2
I’m aware, but that doesn’t answer my question about access to legal recourse.

>>throwa+Ij3
Once you are convicted, and are subject to one of the disproportionate sentences often given to black people, nothing short of a major change to how sentencing law works can provide legal recourse. See: https://www.sentencingproject.org/issues/racial-disparity/

If you survive violence at the hands of law enforcement and are not convicted of a crime, or if you don't and your family wants to hold law enforcement accountable, then the first option is to ask the local public prosecutor to pursue criminal charges against your attackers.

Depending on where you live could be a challenge, given the amount of institutional racial bias in the justice system, and how closely prosecutors tend to work with police departments. After all, if prosecutors were going after police brutality cases aggressively, there likely wouldn't be as much of a problem as there is.

If that's fruitless, you would need to seek the help of a civil rights attorney to push your case in the the legal system and/or the media. This is where a lot of higher profile cases like this end up - and often only because they were recorded on video.