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 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 within the metropolis the place the crime passed off.
Robert Dillon, a 52-year-old industrial 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 cellular phone. The system returned a “93 % match on facial options,” in response to police-investigatory notes. The scores it emits characterize how a lot two photos look alike to the algorithm. Not how doubtless it’s that they present the identical particular person.
FACES holds tens of thousands and thousands of Florida mug pictures and driver’s license photographs and is without doubt 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 residence 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 practically lose his residence. His mug shot stayed on-line for practically a yr, 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 not feels comfy speaking to kids.
The incident passed off shortly earlier than midnight on November 2, 2023, at a McDonald’s in Jacksonville Seaside, the place a person allegedly approached a lady beneath 12 and repeatedly requested her to depart with him. She refused. After he approached her a second time, she referred to 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 choose who signed the warrant for his arrest. A supervisor on the McDonald’s instructed investigators the suspect was a “common buyer” she had seen there a number of instances. In keeping with 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 companies later that November utilizing cellular phone photographs of the McDonald’s surveillance footage. A sergeant with the Jacksonville Sheriff’s Workplace (JSO) ran the photographs via FACES and despatched again the “93 % match” to Dillon’s identify. The investigating officer then requested a search of license plate readers for 2 autos registered to Dillon, masking the times across the incident. Neither turned up anyplace within the county, in response to the criticism, which says the outcomes have been omitted from the warrant software.
Six months handed with no additional investigation, the criticism says. In July 2024, the officer submitted the warrant. A choose signed it, and Dillon was arrested the next month. He retained a legal protection lawyer and, that October, pleaded not responsible. The State Lawyer’s Workplace dropped all costs just a few weeks later. The investigating officer was however promoted by the top of the yr.
“I’ll by no means recover from how terrified and apprehensive I used to be, questioning if I’d ever go residence to my spouse and daughter once more,” Dillon says in an announcement shared by his attorneys. “Over a yr later, I am nonetheless choosing up the items of my life, all as a result of the police relied on this harmful expertise as a substitute of doing their jobs and really investigating.”
