A 37-year-old Detroit woman is suing the police following her unjust arrest as a result of errors in their facial recognition technology.
In a complaint filed at the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Michigan, LaDonna Crutchfield claimed that, after faulty tech led to accusations that she was the suspect of a crime, police targeted her and failed to ask her questions that could have proven she was innocent.
On Jan. 23 last year, she was led away in handcuffs as the suspect of an attempted murder while at her own home with her children. Although the police knew the name of the suspect and realized that Crutchfield was five inches shorter than the person they were looking for, she was taken into custody and was let go only after she gave them fingerprints and a DNA sample.
While in custody, she was told by detectives that she needed to “admit it looks like her” after being shown pictures of the actual suspect.
Crutchfield then feared for the status of her jobs and was forced to go back to get a letter that cleared her as a felony suspect.
“It was very embarrassing,” said Crutchfield per The Detroit News. “This changes people’s lives. My daughter, every time someone knocks on the door, she thinks it’s the police.”
The Detroit police deny that facial recognition technology was used in the case, but the city’s force has a past in wrongfully accusing citizens due to the faulty system.
In 2023, 32-year-old Porcha Woodruff was arrested for an alleged robbery and carjacking while getting her children ready for school. Then eight-months pregnant, she was arrested as the alleged suspect after a victim reported that he was held at gunpoint and robbed at a BP station by a woman.
The video from the gas station was run through facial recognition technology, incorrectly identifying Woodruff as the wanted suspect. While she was in custody, the police proceeded to use an eight-year-old picture of Woodruff to show to the victim despite having access to her driver’s license and refused to check to see if the suspect was pregnant.
Woodruff was one of three victims of faulty facial recognition technology in Detroit. Following the settlement brought by Robert Williams, who was a victim of the new technology, the American Civil Liberties Union announced a settlement in 2024 that should have enacted stronger policies for its usage.
Along with the prohibition of arresting people based solely on facial recognition, the settlement agreed to better training for the system to better identify BIPOC individuals as well as an audit of cases from 2017 on.
