Faulty use of facial recognition technology led to the unjust arrest of a Detroit woman, she said in a federal lawsuit, alleging that police failed to ask basic questions that could’ve cleared her on the spot.
LaDonna Crutchfield, 37, was at home with her children on Jan. 23, 2024, when police took her away in handcuffs and accused her of being their prime suspect in an attempted murder, according to a complaint filed last week in U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Michigan.
LaDonna Crutchfield.
Crutchfield “was identified as a suspect by an unknown facial recognition database,” the lawsuit said.
Investigators knew the name of their suspect — not Crutchfield — and could’ve easily seen the plaintiff is 5 inches shorter and several years younger than the alleged shooter, Crutchfield’s attorney Ivan Land told NBC News on Friday.
Detroit police concede that Crutchfield turned out not to be the suspect that detectives were searching for — but insisted that facial recognition technology wasn’t used here.
“Facial (recognition) was never run. In this case, it was never submitted,” Detroit Police Assistant Chief Charles Fitzgerald said.
Police first linked Crutchfield to the investigation through a partial license plate of the shooter, Fitzgerald said.
Detectives then told Crutchfield that a partial plate led to an Eastside house where one of her relatives once resided, eventually leading to a picture of the plaintiff, according to Land, who disputes that his client’s relatives had ever lived there.
There was enough evidence for detectives to believe Crutchfield was the suspect, though Fitzgerald said police didn’t go “deep enough.”
“The plate also had that there was this woman (the actual suspect) who had a young kid with them in the car,” Fitzgerald said. “She (Crutchfield) has a young child. But unfortunately they didn’t go just deep enough to look to see that it’s also connected to another female that fits the description who has since been charged with this case.”
After taking Crutchfield into custody, a detective showed pictures of the suspected shooter to her and said, “You got to admit it looks like you,” the lawsuit said.
“Why? Because I am fat and Black like her?” the plaintiff said she responded.
Crutchfield said she was released only after agreeing to provide police with her fingerprints and a DNA sample.
Crutchfield feared she’d lose at least one of her two jobs, working as an assistant to mentally disabled adults, after being taken in custody.
So she went back to police the following day and got a detective’s letter to her employer, certifying she was not a felony suspect.
“Ms. Crutchfield was required to appear for an interview held at the Detroit Detention Center,” Detective Marc Thompson wrote in a letter included in Crutchfield’s lawsuit. “However I am able to declare Ms. Crutchfield is not the subject involved in this criminal investigation.”
Critics of facial recognition have long said the technology can be less effective when it comes to people of color.
Detroit police were accused of wrongfully arresting an eight-months pregnant Detroit woman in connection to a carjacking in February 2023.
Porcha Woodruff, then 32 and also a client of Land’s, said she pleaded with police to check if their carjacking suspect was eight-months pregnant at the time but investigators declined to do as they took her into custody, the woman said in her lawsuit.
Crutchfield’s lawsuit did not name a dollar figure for damages she seeks.
The Detroit mother says she’ll never be able to get over being handcuffed and marched away for all to see.
Police “knew or should have known that their conduct would cause severe emotional distress to” Crutchfield, “especially in light of the public nature of the arrest and the presence of her children and neighbors,” according to the lawsuit.
This article was originally published on NBCNews.com
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