LaDonna Crutchfield, a Detroit black woman, says she was wrongfully arrested a year ago because of faulty facial recognition and has filed a lawsuit for her detainment.
As FOX reports, Crutchfeld, 37, was at home in January 2024 when half a dozen Detroit cops showed up at her front door to take her into custody. They wanted to question her about an assault with attempted murder.
“What am I going to jail?” she asked the officers.
The officers told her they had a warrant for her arrest and took her to the station.
According to Crutchfield, the officers told her she looked like a woman wanted in a Project Greenlight video.
“They told her to get in the vehicle. Handcuffed her, walked down the street in front of her neighbors to see. It was just a false arrest,” her attorney, Ivan Land, said. “She asked him why do you think it’s me, because I’m fat and black like her? And he kinda laughed and said you gotta admit it does look like you.”
Crutchfield alleged that police failed to ask basic questions that could’ve cleared her on the spot.
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.
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.
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.”
“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.