False arrest caused by AI: US resident sued over facial recognition system failure

A new scandal is breaking out in the US over the imperfection of modern biometric technologies — another critical error in the facial recognition system led to the arrest of an innocent citizen. Robert Dillon, a Florida resident, has filed a lawsuit against local law enforcement officers who, without due diligence, arrested him on false charges of attempted abduction of a minor.

FACES framed the innocent

A high-profile incident occurred back in November 2023, when an unknown man tried to kidnap a child under 12 years old at a McDonald’s restaurant in Jacksonville Beach. As part of conducting the case, the law enforcement officers used the regional facial analysis system FACES (Face Analysis Comparison and Examination System). The database indicated the similarity of Robert Dillon’s external characteristics with the portrait of the suspect by 93%.

At the same time, the detective who was engaged in the analysis of photo materials made a gross technical error. Instead of the original high-quality footage from the video surveillance camera, he uploaded to the program a screenshot of the monitor that was broadcasting the video of the incident. Because of this, the percentage of coincidence did not have significant reliability.

Obvious alibis completely ignored by the police

Robert Dillon assures that the investigation did not have any evidence of his involvement in the crime, except for the results of the FACES software. The law enforcement officers neglected a number of other important pieces of physical evidence:

• The man actually lives more than 300 miles away from the restaurant in Jacksonville Beach and has never been there.
• Electronic readers of traffic cameras recorded that the defendant’s vehicle did not drive through this district on the day of the attempted kidnapping.

These facts were not reflected in the request, which later became the basis for issuing the warrant. Dillon was taken into house arrest in October 2024, spent a night behind bars and went into heavy debt to secure bail.

Not the first case

In the Dillon case, prosecutors dropped charges after 2 months due to lack of evidence and questionable technology. The man’s interests are protected by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), whose experts claim that this arrest is at least the 15th known precedent in the United States in which a computer algorithm falsely identified a citizen, violating his constitutional rights.

As explained by independent experts, the specified 93% similarity is an internal indicator of the program for grouping comparisons of a person to an array, which the operators of the departments incorrectly translate into legal evidence. The victim expects to receive fair financial compensation for wrongful detention, as well as reforms to the rules of police work with AI.