Facial recognition has proven a problematic way for police departments to identify potential criminals, especially when they are black. (Source: Adobe Stock)

Pregnant Detroit Woman Sixth Victim of Faulty Facial Recognition Due to Race

The New York Times recently reported on an arrest of a woman who was eight months pregnant by the Detroit Police Department—which had already made three arrests of innocent people wrongly identified by the facial recognition program used by the department. At least six people nationwide have reported being wrongly accused because of such programs misidentifying them.

Porcha Woodruff, 32, was arrested for robbery and carjacking last February, handcuffed and hauled away by police in front of her “crying children and fiance,” according to the nytimes.com story. Police held her for 11 hours, during which she had contractions fueled by stress. She was released on a $100,000 personal bond that night. Afterward, she went to the hospital and was treated for dehydration.

A month later, her case was dismissed by the Wayne County prosecutor for insufficient evidence. The story was reported after Woodruff filed a lawsuit for wrongful arrest against the City of Detroit.

The police department used DataWorks Plus to run unknown faces against a database of mug shots. The system returns matches and a human analyst decides if the matches are a potential suspect. According to nytimes.com:

“The police report said the crime analyst gave the investigator Ms. Woodruff’s name based on a match to a 2015 mug shot. Ms. Woodruff said in an interview that she had been arrested in 2015 after being pulled over while driving with an expired license.”

Photos obtained by The New York Times of the mug shot and Woodruff’s driver’s license photo show that she looks different in 2023 from the mug shot taken in 2015. In addition, the woman who committed the carjacking had not been pregnant.

Woodruff is the second person to sue the Detroit Police Department for false arrest. Robert Williams, a Detroit man, also black, was arrested in 2020 for shoplifting based on a match that also did not look like him.

read more at nytimes.com