Because of a bad facial recognition match and other hidden technology, Randal Reid spent nearly a week in jail, falsely accused of stealing purses in a state he said he had never even visited. “I’m locked up for something I have no clue about.”
Randal Quran Reid in Atlanta on March 13, 2023.
His parents made phone calls, hired lawyers and spent thousands of dollars to figure out why the police thought he was responsible for the crime, eventually discovering it was because Reid bore a resemblance to a suspect who had been recorded by a surveillance camera. The case eventually fell apart, and the warrants were recalled, but only after Reid spent six days in jail and missed a week of work.
“The guy had big arms, and my client doesn’t,” Calogero said. A Jefferson Parish sheriff’s officer insisted it was a “positive match,” language that made Calogero believe that facial recognition technology had been used, and he spoke to the New Orleans news outlet NOLA.com about what he believed had happened.
The Sheriff’s Office has a contract with one facial recognition vendor: Clearview AI, which it pays $25,000 a year. According to documents obtained by the Times in a public records request, the department first signed a contract with Clearview in 2019. Bartholomew’s identification of Reid led to a second warrant for his arrest in East Baton Rouge Parish, where, according to a police report, the man he resembled had used a stolen credit card to buy a $2,800 Chanel bag at another consignment store.
“If facial recognition was misclassifying white people, white men or white women, it would not be on the shelf,” he said. “Some of us and some of our communities are expendable.”To get a warrant to arrest someone, an officer must convince a judge there is probable cause — meaning, essentially, there is a good reason to do so — and get the judge’s signature. In the past, that meant an officer had to go to court or even meet a judge at a diner in the middle of the night if the case was urgent.
A criminal court judge signed off on Reid’s arrest warrant at 4:28 p.m. July 18. CloudGavel “accommodates” judicial scrutiny, said Casey Roussel, the president and chief operating officer of CloudGavel’s parent company, FusionStak, in an email. He said judges could “connect with the officer via phone or video to discuss any concerns the judge may have about the warrant.”
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