A Detroit woman is suing the city and a police detective after she was falsely arrested due to facial recognition technology while 8-months pregnant, according to court documents.
Porcha Woodruff, 32, was getting her two children ready for school on the morning of February 16 when six police officers showed up at her doorstep and presented her with an arrest warrant for robbery and carjacking.
Woodruff initially believed the officers were joking given her visibly pregnant state. She was arrested and taken into custody.
“Ms. Woodruff later discovered that she was implicated as a suspect through a photo lineup shown to the victim of the robbery and carjacking, following an unreliable facial recognition match,” court documents state.
The victim told police that he met a woman on January 29 who he had sexual intercourse with. At some point in the day, they went to a BP gas station where the woman “interacted with several individuals,” per the lawsuit.
They then left to another location where the victim was robbed and carjacked at gunpoint by a man who the woman had interacted with earlier at the BP gas station. The victim told police his phone was returned to the gas station two days later.
The lawsuit, filed on Thursday in the Eastern District of Michigan, names Detective LaShauntia Oliver as a defendant, who was assigned to the case.
When Oliver learned that a woman had returned the victim’s phone to the gas station, she allegedly ran facial technology on the video footage, which identified her as Woodruff.
“Detective Oliver stated in detail in her report what she observed in the video footage, and there was no mention of the female suspect being pregnant,” the lawsuit states.
When a man was arrested while driving the victim’s car on February 2, Oliver failed to show the suspect a picture of Woodruff, according to court documents.
The victim was also shown a lineup of potential suspects and identified Woodruff as the woman he was with when he was robbed. Oliver used an eight-year-old picture of Woodruff in the line up from an arrest in 2015, despite having access to her current driver’s license, according the lawsuit.
On the day the Woodruff was arrested, she and her fiancé urged officers to check the warrant to confirm if the woman who committed the crime was pregnant, which they refused to do, according to the lawsuit.
Woodruff was charged with robbery and carjacking and released from the Detroit Detention Center at around 7 p.m. on $100,000 personal bond.
Her fiancé took her to a medical center following her release where she was diagnosed with a low heart rate due to dehydration, and told she was having contractions from stress related to the incident.
On March 6, the Wayne County Prosecutor’s Office dropped the case against Woodruff for “insufficient evidence,” per the lawsuit.
Detroit Chief James E. White told NBC News he reviewed the allegations in the lawsuit, which he said are “very concerning.”
“We are taking this matter very seriously, but we cannot comment further at this time due to the need for additional investigation,” he said in a statement. “We will provide further information once additional facts are obtained and we have a better understanding of the circumstances.”
Oliver did not respond to requests for comment.
Source: | This article originally belongs to Nbcnews.com
