Essentially, an employee of the facial recognition provider forwarded an "investigative lead" for the match they generated (which does have a score associated with it on the provider's side, but it's not clear if the score is clearly communicated to detectives as well), and the detectives then put the photo of this man into a "6 pack" photo line-up, from which a store employee then identified that man as being the suspect.
Everyone involved will probably point fingers at each other, because the provider for example put large heading on their communication that, "this is not probable cause for an arrest, this is only an investigative lead, etc.", while the detectives will say well we got a hit from a line-up, blame the witness, and the witness would probably say well the detectives showed me a line-up and he seemed like the right guy (or maybe as is often the case with line-ups, the detectives can exert a huge amount of bias/influence over witnesses).
EDIT: Just to be clear, none of this is to say that the process worked well or that I condone this. I think the data, the technology, the processes, and the level of understanding on the side of the police are all insufficient, and I do not support how this played out, but I think it is easy enough to provide at least some pseudo-justification at each step along the way.
Presumably, the facial recognition software would provide an additional filter/sort. But at least in my situation, I could actually see how big the total pool of potential matches and thus have a sense of uncertainty about false positives, even if I were completely ignorant about the impact of false negatives (i.e. what if my suspect didn't live within x-miles of the scene, or wasn't a known/convicted felon?)
So the caution re: face recognition software is how it may non-transparently add confidence to this already very imperfect filtering process.
(in my case, the suspect was eventually found because he had committed a number of robberies, including being clearly caught on camera, and in an area/pattern that was easy to narrow down where he operated)
This is absurdly dangerously. The AI will find people who look like the suspect, that’s how the technology works. A lineup as evidence will almost guarantee a bad outcome, because of course the man looks like the suspect!
But for a photo lineup I can't imagine why you don't have least 25 photos to pick from.
> The detective turned over the first piece of paper. It was a still image from a surveillance video, showing a heavyset man, dressed in black and wearing a red St. Louis Cardinals cap, standing in front of a watch display. Five timepieces, worth $3,800, were shoplifted.
> “Is this you?” asked the detective.
> The second piece of paper was a close-up. The photo was blurry, but it was clearly not Mr. Williams. He picked up the image and held it next to his face.
All the preceding grafs are told in the context of "this what Mr. Williams said happened", most explicitly this one:
> “When’s the last time you went to a Shinola store?” one of the detectives asked, in Mr. Williams’s recollection.
According to the ACLU complaint, the DPD and prosecutor have refused FOIA requests regarding the case:
https://www.aclu.org/letter/aclu-michigan-complaint-re-use-f...
> Yet DPD has failed entirely to respond to Mr. Williams’ FOIA request. The Wayne County Prosecutor also has not provided documents.
This arrest happened 6 months ago. Who else besides the suspect and the police do you believe reporters should ask for "basic corroboration" of events that took place inside a police station? Or do you think this story shouldn't be reported on at all until the police agree to give additional info?
This is the lead provided:
https://wfdd-live.s3.amazonaws.com/styles/story-full/s3/imag...
Note that it says in red and bold emphasis:
THIS DOCUMENT IS NOT A POSITIVE IDENTIFICATION. IT IS AN INVESTIGATIVE LEAD ONLY AND IS NOT PROBABLE CAUSE TO ARRREST. FURTHER INVESTIGATION IS NEEDED TO DEVELOP PROBABLE CAUSE TO ARREST.
The real negligence here is whoever tuned the software to spit out a result for that quality of image rather than a "not enough data, too many matches, please submit a better image" error.
The deeper reform that needs to happen here is that every person falsely arrested and/or prosecuted needs to be automatically compensated for their time wasted and other harm suffered. Only then will police departments have some incentive for restraint. Currently we have a perverse reverse lottery where if you're unlucky you just lose a day/month/year of your life. With the state of what we're actually protesting I'm not holding my breath (eg the privileged criminals who committed the first degree murder of Breonna Taylor still have yet to be charged), but it's still worth calling out the smaller injustices that criminal "justice" system inflicts.
They are in the business of exposing you to as many paid ads as possible. And they believe providing outgoing links reduces their ability to do that.
NPR is a non-profit that is mostly funded by donations. They only have minimal paid ads on their website to pay for running costs - they could easily optimize the news pages to increase ad revenue but they don't because it would get in the way of their goals.
I agree here, but doing that may lead to the prosecutors trying extra hard to find something to charge a person with after they are arrested, even if it was something trivial that would often go un-prosecuted.
Getting the details right seems tough, but doable.
This is not correct. The "6-pack" was shown to a security firm's employee, who had viewed the store camera's tape.
"In this case, however, according to the Detroit police report, investigators simply included Mr. Williams’s picture in a “6-pack photo lineup” they created and showed to Ms. Johnston, Shinola’s loss-prevention contractor, and she identified him." [1]
[1] ibid.
The 4th sentence says: "Detectives zoomed in on the grainy footage..."
that's what happens if you're lucky
How did the people in the 6 pack photo line-up match up against the facial recognition? Were they likely matches?
