A Florida man was wrongfully arrested for making an attempt to illegally lure a toddler after police relied on a face recognition match that was inaccurate, in response to a lawsuit filed on Wednesday, though he lived greater than 300 miles from the scene and says he had by no means set foot in 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 screen taken with a cellphone. The system returned a “93 p.c match on facial options,” in response to police investigatory notes. The scores it emits characterize how a lot two photographs look alike to the algorithm. Not how possible it’s that they present the identical particular person.
FACES holds tens of tens of millions of Florida mugshots and driver’s license images and is one of the longest-running police face recognition databases in the United States.
The American Civil Liberties Union, which filed the swimsuit, says Dillon was arrested at his house 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 house. 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 about the case, the criticism says, and he not feels comfy speaking to kids.
The incident befell shortly earlier than midnight on November 2, 2023, at a McDonald’s in Jacksonville Seaside, the place a person allegedly approached a lady below 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 details that pointed away from Dillon and by no means reached the decide who signed the warrant for his arrest. A supervisor at the McDonald’s informed investigators the suspect was a “common buyer” she had seen there a number of instances. In response to the criticism, Dillon had by no means visited Jacksonville Seaside, residing lots of of miles away.
A Jacksonville Seaside police officer assigned to the case despatched an attempt-to-identify bulletin to surrounding businesses 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 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, protecting the days round the incident. Neither turned up wherever in the county, in response to the criticism, which says the outcomes have 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 following month. He retained a legal protection lawyer and, that October, pleaded not responsible. The State Lawyer’s Workplace dropped all fees a couple of weeks later. The investigating officer was nonetheless promoted by the finish of the 12 months.
“I’ll by no means recover from how terrified and anxious I used to be, questioning if I’d ever go house to my spouse and daughter once more,” Dillon says in an announcement shared by his attorneys. “Over a 12 months later, I am nonetheless selecting up the items of my life, all as a result of the police relied on this harmful know-how as an alternative of doing their jobs and truly investigating.”
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