Lawyer says facial recognition tool led to wrongful arrest

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NEW ORLEANS – Louisiana authorities’ use of facial recognition technology led to the mistaken arrest of a Georgia man on a fugitive warrant, a lawyer said in a case that is renewing attention to racial disparities in the use of digital tools.

Randall Reed, 28, was jailed in late November in DeKalb County, Georgia, The Times-Picayune/The New Orleans Advocate reported.

His attorney, Tommy Calogero, said authorities wrongly linked Reid to purse robberies in Jefferson Parish and Baton Rouge. Reid, who was arrested on November 25, was released on December 1.

Reid is black, and his arrest draws new attention to the use of technology that critics say misidentifies people of color as compared to whites.

“They told me I had a warrant out of Jefferson Parish. ‘What’s Jefferson Parish?'” Reid said. “I’ve never been to Louisiana a day in my life. Then they told me it was for robbery. So not only have I never been to Louisiana, I’m not robbing.”

Calogero said Reid was falsely linked to the June theft of luxury handbags from a bar store in Metairie, a New Orleans suburb in Jefferson Parish.

A Baton Rouge Police Department detective then accepted Reid’s identity from the Jefferson Parish Sheriff’s Office to obtain an arrest warrant for him among three men involved in another luxury bag robbery that same week, court records show. brought

Calogero, who estimated the 40-pound difference between Reed and the purser in the surveillance footage, said the differences, like the mole on Reed’s face, prompted the Jefferson County Sheriff to overturn the warrant.

Jefferson Sheriff Joe Lopinto’s office did not respond to multiple requests for information from The Times-Picayune/The New Orleans Advocate about Reed’s arrest and release, the agency’s use of facial recognition or any safeguards.

The agency did not immediately respond to an emailed request Monday by The Associated Press for comment on the story and information about the use of the technology.

The Reed case draws new attention to the use of facial recognition tools in Louisiana and elsewhere.

Facial recognition systems have been criticized for their mass surveillance capabilities, which raise privacy concerns, and because some studies have shown that the technology is more likely to misidentify blacks and other people of color. to whites, which has led to false arrests.

Police in New Orleans say facial recognition can only be used to generate leads, and officers must get approval from department officials before submitting a request through the Louisiana State Fusion and Analytics Exchange in Baton Rouge. According to the city’s latest rules, all possible matches must be peer-reviewed by other facial recognition researchers.

Legislation restricting the use of facial recognition across the state was defeated in a 2021 legislative session.