Wrongful Arrest Reveals Flaws in One of US Police’s Oldest Facial Recognition Devices

A Florida native was wrongly arrested for attempting to seduce a child without consent after the police relied on a face recognition The match was wrong, according to the lawsuit filed on Wednesday, despite the fact that he lived more than 300 kilometers from the site and said he had never set foot in the city where the crime took place.

Robert Dillon, a 52-year-old businessman from Fort Myers, was arrested after FACES—a facial recognition system operated by Florida’s Pinellas County Sheriff’s Office—matched his face to a computer image captured by a cellphone. The system returned “93 percent of facial recognition,” according to police records. The output results represent the number of two images that match the algorithm. It’s not like they show the same person.

FACES contains millions of Florida mugshots and driver’s license photos and is one of the most popular law enforcement archives in the United States.

The American Civil Liberties Union, which filed the lawsuit, says Dillon was arrested at his home in front of his wife, kept overnight in a cold room, and taken away in a locked, unlit vehicle. He pledged responsibility for his car to make a deal. The arrest occurred during lobster season, which caused him to fall behind on rent and nearly lose his home. Her mug shot remained online for nearly a year, removed from the county website only after a TV reporter intervened.

Strangers approach Dillon in public to ask about the crime, the complaint says, and he is also uncomfortable talking to children.

It happened around midnight on November 2, 2023, at a McDonald’s in Jacksonville Beach, when a man allegedly approached a 12-year-old girl and repeatedly asked her to leave with him. He refused. Approaching him again, he called his mother. The man left before police arrived.

The complaint provides several facts that pointed away from Dillon and did not reach the judge who signed the arrest warrant. A manager at the McDonald’s told investigators the suspect was a “regular customer” he had seen several times. According to the complaint, Dillon had never been to Jacksonville Beach, where he lived far away.

The Jacksonville Beach police officer who filed the case sent out an attempt to alert neighborhood agencies later in November using the McDonald’s phone images. A Jacksonville Sheriff’s Office (JSO) sergeant ran the photos through FACES and sent back a “93 percent match” to Dillon’s name. The detective requested to search the license plate readers of two vehicles registered to Dillon, covering the days surrounding the incident. None were found anywhere in the district, according to the complaint, which alleges results were omitted from application forms.

Six months passed without further investigation, the complaint says. In July 2024, the officer issued a warrant. A judge signed off, and Dillon was arrested the following month. He retained an attorney and, in October, pleaded not guilty. The State Attorney’s Office dropped all charges a few weeks later. The detective was promoted at the end of the year.

“I will no longer feel the fear and anxiety that I had, wondering if I will ever go home to my wife and my daughter,” Dillon said in a statement released by his lawyers. “A year later, I’m still thinking about my life, all because the police relied on this dangerous technology instead of doing their job and investigating.”