NEW YORK. Porcha Woodruff, 32 years old, eight months pregnant, was running out of the house to take her children to school, when she saw six policemen on the doorstep. One of them had informed her that he was under arrest. At the time she thought of a joke: she had just been charged with armed robbery and carjacking. They weren’t kidding.
Woodruff was a victim of a failure of the software that deals with facial recognition: the mistake of person took her to the cell without having done anything, and acquitted just two weeks before giving birth. Now the woman has decided to sue the city of Detroit and the police. According to the opinion of some lawyers heard by the American media, she is destined to receive a compensation of many millions of dollars. When she was arrested, and they realized it wasn’t a prank, the 6- and 12-year-olds burst into tears to see their mother taken away in handcuffs.
Woodruff had been identified by comparing a photo taken eight years earlier by the police, when they stopped her for driving with an expired license, and the video images analyzed by the software. The victim, who had been robbed by a woman, who had also taken her car, had seen Woodruff’s photo, proposed by the facial recognition system, and said: yes, it’s her. But she wasn’t.
Now Woodruff has filed a complaint with the Michigan District Attorney’s Office for illegal arrest and detention and for violation of the Fourth Amendment which protects individuals from unwarranted measures. These concern the city of Detroit, but two other complaints have been filed against the police.
“It should be clear – says the woman – that facial recognition should not be considered as evidence to arrest a person.” But the rigidity of the agents added to the error of the algorithm.
Woodruff had immediately asked cHow could she have committed such a crime when she was eight months pregnant. But in the United States it is not uncommon to come across police officers, or officials, who do not change their minds in the face of the solar evidence. If an algorithm says one thing, it must be followed. The police chiefs now admit they are in great embarrassment.
James White, head of the Detroit department, admitted “deep concern about the details of the complaint.” The case, which took place in February, had been filed in March, but in those two weeks first by her arrest, and then as a suspect, the woman had fallen into a deep state of depression and anguish.
During the time she was locked up in the detention center, Woodruff had been forced to sit on a concrete bench for eleven hoursbefore being released on payment of a $100,000 bail.
Immediately rushed to the hospital, she was diagnosed with severe dehydration, which could have jeopardized her pregnancy. While she was in the hospital, she also had a panic attack. Two weeks later she gave birth. The lawsuits brought by her could compensate her for all the trauma she has experienced, and guarantee her and her family a much more peaceful existence. And, probably, with a wealthy status, to be seen next time by the police with a different eye.
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