A Florida man was wrongfully arrested for making an attempt to illegally lure a baby after police relied on a face recognition match that was inaccurate, in line with a lawsuit filed on Wednesday, regardless that he lived greater than 300 miles from the scene and says he had by no means set foot within the metropolis the place the crime befell.
Robert Dillon, a 52-year-old business crabber from Fort Myers, was arrested after FACES—a face recognition system operated by Florida’s Pinellas County Sheriff’s Workplace—matched his face in opposition to a photograph of a person on a pc display taken with a cellphone. The system returned a “93 p.c match on facial options,” in line with police investigatory notes. The scores it emits signify how a lot two pictures look alike to the algorithm. Not how doubtless it’s that they present the identical individual.
FACES holds tens of hundreds of thousands of Florida mugshots and driver’s license images and is likely one of the longest-running police face recognition databases in america.
The American Civil Liberties Union, which filed the go well with, says Dillon was arrested at his dwelling in entrance of his spouse, held in a single day in a chilly cell, and transported in a caged, unlit van. He pledged the title to his truck to make bond. The arrest got here throughout peak stone crab season, inflicting him to fall behind on lease and almost lose his dwelling. His mugshot stayed on-line for almost a 12 months, faraway from the county web site solely after a TV reporter intervened.
Strangers strategy Dillon in public to ask in regards to the case, the criticism says, and he now not feels snug speaking to kids.
The incident befell shortly earlier than midnight on November 2, 2023, at a McDonald’s in Jacksonville Seashore, the place a person allegedly approached a lady underneath 12 and repeatedly requested her to depart with him. She refused. After he approached her a second time, she known as for her mom. The person left earlier than the police arrived.
The criticism lays out a number of information that pointed away from Dillon and by no means reached the decide who signed the warrant for his arrest. A supervisor on the McDonald’s advised investigators the suspect was a “common buyer” she had seen there a number of instances. In line with the criticism, Dillon had by no means visited Jacksonville Seashore, residing lots of of miles away.
A Jacksonville Seashore police officer assigned to the case despatched an attempt-to-identify bulletin to surrounding companies later that November utilizing cellphone images of the McDonald’s surveillance footage. A sergeant with the Jacksonville Sheriff’s Workplace (JSO) ran the photographs by means of FACES and despatched again the “93 p.c match” to Dillon’s title. The investigating officer then requested a search of license plate readers for 2 automobiles registered to Dillon, masking the times across the incident. Neither turned up anyplace within the county, in line with the criticism, which says the outcomes had been omitted from the warrant utility.
Six months handed with no additional investigation, the criticism says. In July 2024, the officer submitted the warrant. A decide signed it, and Dillon was arrested the next month. He retained a felony protection legal professional and, that October, pleaded not responsible. The State Lawyer’s Workplace dropped all prices just a few weeks later. The investigating officer was nonetheless promoted by the tip of the 12 months.
“I’ll by no means recover from how terrified and frightened I used to be, questioning if I’d ever go dwelling to my spouse and daughter once more,” Dillon says in an announcement shared by his attorneys. “Over a 12 months later, I am nonetheless choosing up the items of my life, all as a result of the police relied on this harmful know-how as a substitute of doing their jobs and truly investigating.”
