(NewsNation) — A 32-year-old woman in Detroit is suing the police department after she says faulty facial recognition software led to her wrongful arrest.
Porcha Woodruff was eight months pregnant when police arrived at her doorstep Feb. 16 to serve a warrant on carjacking charges.
“I was kind of taken aback and shocked,” Woodruff said Thursday on “CUOMO” of the experience. “I’m, like, I have a car, and my vehicle is sitting right there in the driveway and I’m pregnant. Who am I gonna carjack?”
She claims in her lawsuit she later learned that she was identified as a suspect through the use of facial recognition technology that is now the target of lawsuits filed by three Black Michigan residents.
Woodruff’s case was dismissed by the Wayne County Prosecutor’s Office in March for insufficient evidence, according to the lawsuit.
Woodruff was identified as a subject in a January robbery and carjacking through the Detroit Police Department’s facial recognition technology, according to a statement from the office of Wayne County Prosecutor Kym Worthy. Detroit detectives showed a photo lineup to the carjacking victim, who positively identified Woodruff.
The American Civil Liberties Union of Michigan is now calling on the Detroit Police Department to end the use of facial recognition technology that led to Woodruff’s arrest. It is the third known allegation of a wrongful arrest by Detroit police based on the technology, according to the ACLU.
Woodruff’s attorney Ivan Land said the city is trying to chalk it up simple human error and argue the technology is needed.
“They’re running this narrative to try to shove this down citizens of Detroit’s throats,” Ward said. “This should end. … I don’t know why Detroit wants to push this narrative with facial recognition so bad.”
Critics say the technology results in a higher rate of misidentification of people of color than of white people. Woodruff’s lawsuit contends that facial recognition has been “proven to misidentify Black citizens at a higher rate than others,” and that “facial recognition alone cannot serve as probable cause for arrests.”
Detroit Police Chief James E. White said in a statement after the lawsuit that the allegations contained in the lawsuit are “deeply concerning” and said the department is “taking this matter very seriously.”
Later, he announced the department is changing its policies on how facial recognition is used.
White said his officers will not be allowed “to use facial-recognition-derived images in a photographic lineup. Period.”
The Associated Press contributed to this report.