A False Match, an Arrest at Home

What happened

In January 2020, Detroit police arrested Robert Williams at his home in Farmington Hills, Michigan, in front of his wife and two young daughters. A facial recognition search had wrongly matched an old driver’s licence photo of him to surveillance footage of a 2018 theft from a Detroit shop. He was held for nearly 30 hours.

Who spoke up

Robert Williams and his family. With the American Civil Liberties Union he sued the city of Detroit in 2021, and that July he gave testimony to a subcommittee of the US House Judiciary Committee about the arrest and what it did to his family. He has continued to speak publicly about it.

What changed

In June 2024 the case settled, with binding rules for Detroit police. They may not arrest anyone based only on a facial recognition result, or on a photo lineup run straight after one. They may not put a facial recognition lead in a lineup without independent, reliable evidence. Officers must be trained on the technology’s risks, including its higher rate of misidentifying people of colour, and the department must audit cases going back to 2017. The court keeps jurisdiction for four years to enforce the agreement. The AP reported that the city would also pay him $300,000.

What to keep straight

• The $300,000 figure comes from AP reporting, not from the settlement text.
• This is a story about policing, not school. It is here because it happened to a family, and because it shows what goes wrong when a machine’s match is treated as proof.

Talk about it

• The software produced a lead. People turned it into an arrest. Where should the checks have been?
• His daughters watched the arrest. Who else is affected when a system gets one person wrong?
• The new rules require “independent, reliable evidence.” What should count?