Detroit, living up to its ghetto butt reputation, arrested a woman for a shooting based on facial recognition "matches" from 2 images with analog broadcast TV like quality

Last year, Detroit police wrongly arrested LaDonna Crutchfield after facial recognition software incorrectly identified her as the culprit of a shooting, according to a lawsuit filed on February 21. While police did not even have a warrant for Crutchfield's arrest, they handcuffed, detained, and jailed her anyway. The officers had conducted no investigation, relying fully on a facial recognition database. Police released Crutchfield only when it became obvious that they had arrested the wrong person.

Just like the previous three bogus arrests, cops went after people based solely on facial recognition matches without bothering to verify anything else about the supposed suspects. And just like those previous cases, the images used to perform these searches were far less than ideal. Crutchfield's lawsuit [PDF] contains the images the Detroit PD used as [re-reads lawsuit] the entirety of its probable cause determinations.

The 2 images of the suspect:

In addition to the bad match, the officers actually didn't have an arrest warrant when they arrested Crutchfield. All they had was permission to try to talk her into an interview with the detective (Marc Thompson) as a person of interest in the alleged shooting.

When Detective Thompson did finally interview the now-arrested Crutchfield, he offered up this embarrassing interaction completely unprompted:

PLAINTIFF noticed that the photos contained a heavy-set black woman wearing a bonnet, and DEFENDANT THOMPSON asked PLAINTIFF if that was her.

PLAINTIFF immediately stated "no" and explained to DEFENDANT THOMPSON that she does not wear bonnets.

DEFENDANT THOMPSON jokingly stated to PLAINTIFF that, "you got to admit it – that looks like you, and PLAINTIFF replied, "Why? Because I am fat and black like her?"

Even though it was only six hours, it still matters. It meant Crutchfield wasn't able to go to her first job and was only barely able to get to work on time for her second job. And she spent the night at her second job traumatized by this bogus arrest, meaning she was of little use to the mentally challenged adults she cared for at that job.

On top of that, it's clear no other investigation was performed before Crutchfield was warrantlessly arrested. The only thing officers relied on was a questionable match kicked out by an algorithm that had been fed even more questionable source images.

Remember that you can never hate the average American police officer enough

Hopefully, Crutchfield will secure a swift settlement from the city.