A Detroit woman is suing the city and a police detective after she says facial recognition technology wrongfully pegged her as a robbery and carjacking suspect while she was eight months pregnant, leading to her arrest.
Porcha Woodruff, 32, in a lawsuit filed Thursday said she was left scared, humiliated and her pregnancy jeopardized after being arrested at her home back in February by six police officers as she readied her two young children, ages 6 and 12, for school.
“Are you kidding, carjacking? Do you see that I am eight months pregnant?” she said she told one of the arresting officers, according to the lawsuit filed in U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Michigan.
Woodruff, while dealing with gestational diabetes from her pregnancy, said she was taken to a detention center and held for 11 hours after being implicated as a suspect in an armed robbery that took place several weeks earlier.
UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT EASTERN DISTRICT OF MICHIGAN SOUTHERN DIVISION
The case against her was later dropped. Woodruff’s suit claims that this was due to a lack of evidence. The Wayne County prosecutor’s office said this was because the robbery victim did not attend a March court hearing.
The arrest warrant “was appropriate based upon the facts,” the office said in a statement to JS Monday.
Detroit Police Chief James E. White in a statement to JS called the allegations presented in Woodruff’s lawsuit “very concerning” but said that he cannot comment further due to it being an ongoing investigation.
“We will provide further information once additional facts are obtained and we have a better understanding of the circumstances,” he said.
According to Woodruff’s lawsuit, she was incorrectly identified as involved in the robbery after an old arrest photo of her from 2015 was added to a photo lineup of six women that was presented to the robbery victim by police.
The man considered the photos and he identified Woodruff as a woman who he met at a store and had sex with shortly before being carjacked on Jan. 29. Just before the theft, he said he saw the woman interact with his future carjacker at a gas station that they stopped at.
“He stated that she was the person that he had spent several hours with on the day he was robbed,” prosecutor Kym Worthy’s office said in the statement.
Woodruff’s photo was added to the lineup after Police Detective LaShauntia Oliver, who was handling the case, went to the gas station to review surveillance footage and consequently requested that facial recognition be used to identify the woman seen on video.
The carjacking suspect was later arrested and questioned. But he was not presented a photo of Woodruff to see if she was the same woman that he allegedly interacted with, according to the suit.
After being arrested at her home in front of her children and fiancé, Woodruff said she was taken to a detention center where she was questioned by Oliver. Her phone was confiscated and she was told that she was identified as a suspect through a photo lineup.
Woodruff said she asked Oliver if the victim said the woman he was with was eight months pregnant. Oliver said he did not.
“Despite knowing that [Woodruff] was not involved in the robbery or carjacking, DETECTIVE OLIVER directed [Woodruff] back to the holding cell. [Woodruff] was arraigned approximately two hours later on the charges of robbery and carjacking,” the lawsuit states.
Woodruff was released later that night on bond, and her fiancé took her to a hospital where she was treated for dehydration and diagnosed with low heart rate. She also learned that she had had contractions during her ordeal due to stress from the earlier events, according to her lawsuit.
“This case highlights the significant flaws associated with using facial recognition technology to identify criminal suspects,” her lawsuit states. “Despite its potential, law enforcement’s reliance on facial recognition has led to wrongful arrests, causing humiliation, embarrassment, and physical injury, as evident in this particular incident.”
Woodruff’s lawsuit alleges false arrest and imprisonment, the violation of her Fourth Amendment right against unreasonable search and seizure, and accuses Oliver of acting with malice and reckless indifference to her rights.
She knew “that there was a high probability that her conduct would cause severe emotional distress,” her suit states.
A representative for the city said it does not comment on active litigation.