In a significant policy shift, the Detroit Police Department is implementing major changes to its use of facial recognition technology. This comes after a lawsuit settlement involving a wrongful arrest in 2020, where facial recognition technology mistakenly identified a man as a suspect in a theft.
As part of the settlement, the department is required to revise its policies. The most notable change is that police officers can no longer rely solely on facial recognition results to make arrests or conduct photo lineups. Instead, they must have additional evidence to proceed with such actions.
The Detroit Police Department has welcomed these changes, hoping that the new robust policies will set a standard for other police departments nationwide.
