Lawyers and Advocates Are Demanding an Investigation Into the NYPD's Use of Facial Recognition Technology

Trevis Williams lost months of his life to the legal system, thanks to the NYPD's facial recognition policing gone wrong. On Tuesday, the New York Times published a deeply disturbing account of Williams's ordeal. After his mug shot was generated as a possible match to the offender in an indecent exposure case, he was arrested and spent two days in jail in April before the charges against him were dropped in July. 

It didn't matter than Williams was in a different borough on February 10, when the crime was committed, or that he was eight inches taller than the five-foot-six man who the victim described as having flashed her; they were both Black men with facial hair and braids, which was enough for the NYPD's facial recognition software to flag him—and for NYPD investigators to make the decision to place him in a photo lineup, which was then shown to the victim, who misidentified him.

On Monday, the Legal Aid Society sent a letter to the City's Department of Investigation urging the agency to open a probe into the NYPD's use of facial recognition technology, and to include the results of the investigation into the agency's next annual audit of the police department's compliance with the POST Act, a City law that compels the department to disclose when and how it uses surveillance technology on New Yorkers.