Heavily Pregnant Black Woman Imprisoned For 11 Hours Following False Facial Recognition Match

Porcha Woodruff, 32, was eight months pregnant when she was arrested after facial recognition technology wrongly identified her as a suspect in a robbery and carjacking.

She is the sixth person, all of whom are Black, and the first woman known to be wrongfully arrested due to facial recognition technology. 

What happened?

The New York Times reported that Woodruff was getting her six and 12-year-old daughters ready for school when six police officers arrived at her door. 

She had been identified as the perpetrator of a robbery and carjacking that had taken place in Detroit two weeks prior.

The robbery victim told the police that he had picked up a woman on the street earlier in the day, drank with her and dropped her off at a spot where a man she was meeting approached him with a handgun, stealing the victim’s wallet and phone.

A detective with the police department’s commercial auto theft unit got the surveillance video from the pair’s location and asked a crime analyst at the department to run a facial recognition search of the woman.

According to city documents, the department uses a facial recognition vendor, DataWorks Plus, to run unknown faces against a database of criminal mugshots. The system then returns matches ranked by their likelihood of being the same person.

The police report confirmed the crime analyst gave the investigator Woodruff’s name based on a 2015 mugshot taken after she was caught driving with an expired license.

They used the eight-year-old photo in a line-up for the victim rather than the 2021 driver’s license photo they have available. The victim identified Woodruff as the woman he had been with. 

Arrested while heavily pregnant 

Six police officers turned up at Woodruff’s home to find her heavily pregnant. The victim had not described the perpetrator as pregnant.

Still, they handcuffed Woodruff and took her to the Detroit Detention Center where she stayed for 11 hours whilst having contractions, spasms, and what she assumed was a panic attack.

She was then further charged in court with robbery and carjacking before being released on a $100,000 personal bond. 

She later reported that she went directly to the hospital, where she was found to be dehydrated and treated with two bags of intravenous fluids.

A month later, the Wayne County prosecutor dismissed the case against her.

Facial Recognition and Black People

Woodruff is the sixth person to report being falsely accused of a crime due to facial recognition technology used by the police. All victims have been Black, with Woodruff being the first woman.

At the beginning of this year, a Black Georgia man spent almost a week in jail after Louisiana police wrongly identified him as a fugitive using facial recognition software, despite never setting foot in Louisiana. 

Researchers have noted racial biases in specific facial recognition software, leading to several wrongful arrests.

Last Thursday, Woodruff filed a lawsuit against the city of Detroit in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Michigan. According to The Washington Post, the lawsuit alleges false arrest, false imprisonment, and a violation of her Fourth Amendment rights to be protected from unreasonable seizures. 

The lawsuit also names LaShauntia Oliver, the detective who questioned Woodruff and admitted to her that the victim had not described the suspect as pregnant.

“I have reviewed the allegations contained in the lawsuit. They are very concerning,” said James E. White, Detroit’s police chief, in a statement to The New York Times.

He confirmed they are taking the matter very seriously but cannot comment further now.

Featured Image Credit: The New York Times