Randal Quran Reid, 29, a Black man was wrongfully arrested and held for nearly a week in jail because of the alleged misuse of facial recognition technology.
Reid was driving to his mother’s home outside of Atlanta the day after Thanksgiving when police pulled him over, according to Reid.
False arrest
The DeKalb County police officers who pulled Reid over were in possession of two warrants issued by Jefferson and East Baton Rouge Parishes in Louisiana for Reid’s arrest.
“I asked them why was I being locked up,” Reid said. “‘What is it [the warrant] even saying that I did?’ And then they just kept telling me that it was out of their jurisdiction and they didn’t really know.”
Facial recognition tech
Officers of the Jefferson Parish Sheriff’s Office used facial recognition technology to identify Reid as a suspect who was wanted for using stolen credit cards to buy approximately $15,000 worth of designer purses in Jefferson and East Baton Rouge Parishes.
“Part of the problem with this technology is that the public lacks good information about how it’s actually being used,” Wessler told ABC News. “It’s often used in tremendous secrecy by police. And we know that it often misidentifies people, which has led to wrongful arrests in six known cases [around the country] but probably more cases than that.”
According to Wessler, all known cases of false arrests due to facial recognition technology were of Black or African-American people.
Reid was held in a DeKalb County prison for six days as his parents and lawyers scrambled to find a way to clear his name before his extradition to Louisiana, Reid said. After his lawyers sent multiple pictures of Reid to JPSO for them to realize that they had the wrong person in detainment, his warrants were thrown out and he was finally released.
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