MICHIGAN · FACIAL RECOGNITION

Porcha Woodruff: Detroit faced another wrongful-arrest allegation after a facial-recognition match.

Eight months pregnant when arrested · civil litigation followed

Porcha Woodruff alleged that Detroit police wrongfully arrested her in 2023 after an investigation involving a facial-recognition match. She was eight months pregnant at the time. The ACLU described her case as the third known allegation in three years of a Detroit wrongful arrest based on reliance on a false facial-recognition match.

Because litigation involves allegations and contested facts, NoRec does not treat every allegation in a complaint as an adjudicated finding. The case is included because the underlying facial-recognition failure mode and subsequent legal challenge are documented.

Why it matters: Repetition matters. Once a failure mode has produced multiple serious disputes, “a human is in the loop” is not by itself an answer; the quality of that human review matters.

Sources: ACLU of Michigan / ACLU · ACLU facial-recognition case index

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