A North Carolina man has been freed after months in jail after authorities determined he did not commit the crime for which he was accused. Now, the exonerated man is blaming a false AI identification, shoddy police work and racial profiling for his arrest and detention.
AI wrongly identified a North Carolina man for car theft crimes in Florida
Action News Jax reported that Jalil Richardson of Charlotte, North Carolina, was arrested and jailed for nearly three months, falsely accused of selling a stolen car to a man in Jacksonville, Florida. Richardson’s arrest came in part because Jacksonville police used Automated Facial Recognition, an artificial intelligence-driven software program, to identify Richardson as the suspect seen in surveillance footage of the car sale.
Richardson’s wife, Jasmine Jackson, said officers told the couple that Richardson had been identified as an “85% match” by the software. Based on the positive AI identification of Richardson’s photo as matching the suspect, as well as an identification from the man who reported the car fraud, Richardson was jailed on a litany of charges, including grand theft, dealing in stolen property and possession of a fraudulent title, among others.
Richardson, meanwhile, maintained that he was at work hundreds of miles away in North Carolina when the crimes occurred in Florida, and timecards from the job he had at the time verify this. Now, authorities have released Richardson and dropped all charges.
Richardson’s case is bringing renewed attention to the use of AI facial recognition by Jacksonville police. In another case, a man was falsely arrested after the software declared him a 93% match for a man who tried to lure a 12-year-old child away in a Jacksonville Beach case.
Michelle Suskauer, a criminal defense attorney who was not a part of these cases, told Action News Jax that “There are so many levels of error here” when it comes to using facial recognition software on low-quality images.
Jacksonville police, meanwhile, issued a statement defending their process.
“Facial recognition technology is used as one tool among many available to investigators,” the statement read. “In this case, it was one tool, but certainly not the only tool, which lent to the probable cause determination that Mr. Richardson was the perpetrator of these crimes.”
‘Racial profiling’ and ‘no proper investigation’ led to arrest, Richardson says
Richardson blames his arrest not just on the use of AI but also on poor police work and racial profiling.
“I want to say racial profiling,” Richardson told WSOC-TV about the victim in the car fraud case who falsely identified him. “The guy said it was a guy with dreads and a big nose, and then they picked me out of a lineup of guys that look nothing like me,” Richardson told the news station.
He also blames police for failing to do their due diligence, ignoring his pleas that he had never even been to Florida.
“There was no proper investigation done to even reach out to me or to see if I was even in Florida,” Richardson said of the police. “He just automatically put a warrant out for my arrest.”
Richardson detailed to WSOC-TV how the ordeal has ruined much of his life. After his arrest, he was jailed for a month in North Carolina before being extradited to Florida, where he sat in jail for an additional 50 days.
During his time in jail, he lost his job, his home and custody of two of his children. Even after charges against him were dropped, his mugshot remains posted online, hampering his ability to get a new job.
“I’m not sure how I’m going to bounce back from this one,” Richardson told WSOC. “It’s a lot. I’m trying to take it one day at a time and get any help and any resources that I can.”
Now, Richardson and his wife are trying to put the pieces of their lives back together after he lost so much over a crime he did not commit. And the couple are not the only people asking questions about how such a mistake was made and the role that AI played in sending an innocent Black man to jail.