Black man wrongfully jailed for a week after face recognition error, report says

Police in Louisiana used an incorrect facial recognition match to get warrants for the arrest of a black man who didn't commit a crime.

According to a report published Monday on the website of the Times-Picayune/New Orleans Advocate, the man was in jail for almost a week after he was arrested. The newspaper asked if he had ever been to Louisiana.

Local police pulled over Reid on Nov. 25 as he drove on Interstate 20 in DeKalb County, Georgia, headed to a late Thanksgiving celebration with his mother, he said.

"They told me I had a warrant out of Jefferson Parish. I said, 'What is Jefferson Parish?,'" Reid said. "I have never been to Louisiana a day in my life. Then they told me it was for theft. So not only have I not been to Louisiana, I also don't steal."

Reid was booked into the DeKalb County jail as a fugitive but was let go on Dec. 1, a jail official said.

According to the report, Tommy Calogero said that Jefferson Parish Sheriff's Office detectives "tacitly" admitted the mistake and withdrew the warrant. Calogero thinks they realized they went out on a limb to make an arrest.

“Police could have checked his height and weight”

He said he wasn't eating or sleeping while in jail. I'm considering the charges. I don't know what's going on, so I'm not doing anything. They didn't attempt to make the correct ID.

The case started with the theft of more than $10,000 worth of purses from a store in Louisiana. Calogero said it wouldn't have been difficult to conclude that the person who entered numbers from a stolen credit card at the register wasn't Reid.

Calogero said that a mole on Reid's face was one of the reasons police released him. According to the Times-Picayune/New Orleans Advocate report, Calogero estimated a 40-pound difference between the two men. The culprit had fat arms.

Police could have checked his height and weight, spoken to him, or walked through his house to look for evidence. Calogero said that the man would have complied.

It's unclear what facial recognition was used for. The Jefferson Parish Sheriff's office has used the Louisiana State Analytic and Fusion Exchange to request facial recognition analyses in the past.

The faces are compared on social media. "Our platform, powered by facial recognition technology, includes the largest known database of over 30 billion facial images from public only web sources, including news media, mugshot websites, public social media, and other open sources," the company's website says.

Sheriff’s office denied newspaper’s request for warrant

The wrong facial recognition match led to two warrants for his arrest, according to the Times-Picayune. The first was obtained by the Jefferson Parish Sheriff's Office and the second by the Baton Rouge police.

The Times-Picayune/New Orleans Advocate reported that a detective from the Baton Rouge Police Department used the identification of the JPSO to get an arrest warrant for him.

According to the report, the office did not respond to requests for information and denied a request for copies of policies or purchases related to facial recognition due to an ongoing investigation. The report said that the warrant obtained by Baton Rouge police didn't say how the office of the sheriff identified the man.

If we get any new information, we'll update this article.

Government use of facial recognition systems has been banned due to privacy concerns and evidence of bias. The Electronic Frontier Foundation saysFacial recognition software is bad at recognizing African-Americans and other ethnic minorities.