A resemblance is not proof

In January 2020, Robert Williams, a Black man from suburban Detroit, was arrested in front of his home in Farmington Hills, before the eyes of his wife and his two young daughters. Police suspected him of stealing watches from a downtown store. The only link: facial recognition software had matched a blurry surveillance camera image with an old photo from his driver's licence. He was not the thief. Yet he spent 30 hours in detention.

Robert Williams is not an isolated case: in Detroit alone, at least two other people, also Black, were wrongly arrested because of a false match.

With the help of the American Civil Liberties Union, he sued the City. On June 28, 2024, a settlement was reached. Detroit police can no longer arrest someone on the basis of facial recognition alone: the result must be backed by other, independent evidence. Officers must be trained on the technology and on its heavier impact on people of colour, and arrests linked to the technology since 2017 must be audited.

A wounded man could have stayed silent. He chose to tell his story, again and again, so that other families would not have to live through the same thing.