Dallas Police to Implement Facial Recognition AI Technology – NBC 5 Dallas-Fort Worth
Dallas Police Department investigators will begin using facial recognition technology to capture people suspected of crimes.
The police chief told a group of councilors on Monday that they had waited years to see how the program would work in other departments.
They intend to use a somewhat controversial program. ClearView AI scours the Internet for billions of photos, including those on social media sites like Instagram, Facebook and LinkedIn. It then uses artificial intelligence to identify the people the police are looking for.
Police Chief Eddie Garcia told the committee they plan to implement the program within six months and have already used it in individual cases. It points to a case, helping investigators find a child pornography suspect. They identified the man after he was captured in the background of a photo at a fair.
NBC 6 in South Florida covered the launch of ClearView AI in that city. During a 2020 protest that turned violent, police used the program to find and arrest a 25-year-old woman they saw on camera throwing rocks at police.
“We use technology to identify violent protesters, those who attacked police officers, those who damaged police property, those who set fire to property,” Deputy Chief Armando Aguilar said at the time.
“I think this is going to be a game changer,” said Dallas Police Chief Garcia.
Garcia said his department waited to see other cities’ problems with the technology, saying Dallas will have a “robust” policy in place. They will not allow the police to go on fishing expeditions. Department policy will require investigators to search for specific suspects accused of specific crimes, peer-reviewed by a supervisor at the city’s Real Time Crime Center.
“I’ve always had a lot of concerns about privacy, whether it’s data or other things. This is very comfortable for me. This feels like efficiency and just the next step,” Councilwoman Cara Mendelsohn said from the dais.
Major Stephen Williams said this would help officers catch suspects in large crowds, such as sporting events and concerts.
“These large-scale events create additional snapshots into the solution. The more publicity and attention we get from public events when people post photos, it helps the individual process of how we identify individual people in places,” Williams said.
The department will pay for the program with funds outside the city budget. For context, the city of Miami hired ClearView AI for $12,000 in 2020.
