Settlement / payout

The city of Bloomington reached a settlement on Tuesday after claims that its officers incorrectly identified and jailed a man in 2021. The Minnesota Chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union said the city agreed to settle a lawsuit over the wrongful arrest of Kylese Perryman. Bloomington agreed to pay Perryman monetary damages and change police training and policy. As part of the settlement, Bloomington agreed to adopt a procedure incorporating the KOPS alert guidelines contained in the BCA’s Minnesota Criminal Justice Information System Operating Manual, and to adopt a procedure stating that police officers are prohibited from issuing KOPS alerts as arrest warrants.

The ACLU Foundation of Northern California settled a lawsuit against Sonoma County over a code enforcement drone surveillance program. Under the settlement, Sonoma County Code Enforcement is barred from warrantless drone surveillance of homes or surrounding areas except in limited situations such as emergencies or property owner consent. Permit Sonoma must notify residents if their home was surveilled by drone, delete drone footage within 30 days of collection or investigation close, and stop sharing images with third parties unless required by law. The county must present a revised drone policy to the Board of Supervisors and produce flight logs to the ACLU for two years.

Bloomington, Minnesota, settled a wrongful-arrest lawsuit brought by Kylese Perryman, who spent five days in jail after police incorrectly identified him as a suspect in a 2021 robbery and carjacking investigation. The agreement resolves remaining claims against the city and requires changes to how Bloomington alerts other law enforcement agencies about suspects; Perryman will receive a payment under the settlement. Hennepin County separately paid Perryman $10,000 in 2024. Charges were dismissed 52 days after his arrest, following five days in jail and 30 days on electronic home monitoring. The ACLU of Minnesota represented Perryman. The lawsuit alleged that police treated the facial recognition software result as an identification without completing basic corroborating work, despite evidence such as home surveillance footage and the absence of tattoos on the person recorded at Walmart.

Stanwood City Council unanimously approved a $40,000 payment as its share of an $80,000 settlement to resolve a public records lawsuit over Flock Safety automated license plate reader camera images. The lawsuit arose from requests by Jose Rodrigues for camera images from Stanwood and Sedro-Woolley. A Skagit County Superior Court judge ruled the cities wrongfully withheld the images, which are public records subject to disclosure, and awarded attorney fees, costs, and penalties. The settlement is split evenly between the two cities.

On Aug. 13, 2026, the Washington cities of Stanwood and Sedro-Woolley settled a public records case for $80,000, split $40,000 each, with Jose Rodriguez, an Oregon resident who had requested Flock camera images from Stanwood in April 2025 and Sedro-Woolley in May 2025. The cities had sought a declaratory judgment that the images were not public records; on November 6, 2025, Skagit County Superior Court Judge Elizabeth Neidzwski ruled they were. After a new state law exempting plate reader footage took effect in March 2026, the cities dropped their appeal, and on July 16 the judge ruled they had wrongfully withheld the records. Cascadia Daily News reported that Rodriguez filed 53 requests to Washington governments between September 2024 and October 2025, that at least 15 jurisdictions paid settlements of $5,000 to $40,000 each, totalling more than $300,000, and that at least 13 recipients cancelled Flock contracts or deactivated cameras. Everett separately approved a $25,000 settlement in June 2026 over a Flock records request.

The American Civil Liberties Union of Delaware settled a lawsuit against Dewey Beach after the town voluntarily released police body-worn camera footage that had been initially denied in response to a public records request. The lawsuit, filed in Delaware Superior Court in March 2026, alleged the town improperly denied the request. The incident occurred in summer 2025, involving young people who reported possible racial discrimination; none were charged. The ACLU argued Delaware law allows access when there is no ongoing criminal investigation. On June 4, 2026, the ACLU announced the footage was provided and the case settled. Andrew Bernstein, ACLU-DE Civic Engagement Counsel, said, “Body-worn cameras only provide transparency and accountability to the extent that the public can actually access the footage.”

In June 2026, Everett, Washington approved a $25,000 settlement with Jose Rodriguez to end litigation over Flock Safety automated license plate reader records. Rodriguez had requested approximately 30 minutes of the city’s Flock data. A Snohomish County judge ruled the recordings were public records, and Everett temporarily paused its Flock camera system. The city had argued the footage was not subject to public disclosure.

On March 4, 2026 Chicago agreed to pay $500,000 to Michael Williams, who was charged with murder in 2020 after prosecutors used audio from ShotSpotter sensors as key evidence that he had shot a man inside his car. Williams spent nearly a year in jail before a judge dismissed the case at prosecutors’ request for insufficient evidence. His federal lawsuit, brought with the MacArthur Justice Center, alleged police misused the technology. The city’s Law Department said the payment resolved the case before trial and included no admission that the city was legally at fault. SoundThinking issued a statement the same day saying the company’s data had helped clear Williams.

In October 2025, Brandon Upchurch settled his lawsuit against the city of Toledo for $35,000. The suit stemmed from an April 2024 stop in which a Flock Safety license-plate camera misread a ‘7’ as a ‘2’ on his truck’s plate, prompting officers to stop him at gunpoint. A police dog bit him, he was jailed, and charges were later dismissed. The Toledo Police Department issued a verbal reprimand to officer Adrian Wilson for failing to verify the plate before the stop. Upchurch’s attorney said the judge remarked, ‘Flock Flocked up.’

In August 2025 the City of Chicago agreed to settle Williams v. City of Chicago, a class action brought on behalf of two men who were stopped and frisked after ShotSpotter alerts, in separate incidents on the South and Northwest sides. The city’s Law Department put the settlement at $90,000. As part of the agreement the city conceded that a ShotSpotter alert alone does not justify stopping or patting down a person who happens to be near the alert location. The city had stopped using the system in September 2024 and, at the time of the settlement, was considering bringing gunshot detection back.

Jefferson Parish Sheriff Joe Lopinto’s office agreed to pay $200,000 to settle a civil rights lawsuit filed by Randal Quran Reid, who was jailed for six days in 2022 after a facial recognition match wrongly identified him. The payout was approved at a May 13 hearing in federal court in New Orleans and sealed. Reid’s arrest stemmed from a warrant that relied on a Clearview AI match that JPSO detectives failed to verify. JPSO rescinded the warrants after Reid’s attorney pointed out physical differences. The settlement does not include an admission of fault.

In May 2025, the Jefferson Parish Sheriff’s Office agreed to pay $200,000 to settle a federal civil rights suit by Randal Reid, with the payment finalized in federal court in New Orleans. Reid was stopped by DeKalb County police outside Atlanta the day after Thanksgiving 2022 on warrants from Jefferson and East Baton Rouge parishes accusing him of using stolen credit cards to buy about $15,000 in designer purses. He had never been to Louisiana and spent six days in jail before the warrants were withdrawn. According to the suit, the sole basis for identifying him was a Clearview AI facial-recognition match run by a sheriff’s detective; the office had awarded Clearview a $25,000 contract in 2019. The arrest affidavit did not mention facial recognition, citing only ‘a credible source.’ The suit alleged the office had no formal policy or training on the technology despite using it since at least 2019.

Detroit agreed to pay $35,000 to settle a federal lawsuit after police used license plate reader data to wrongly detain Isoke Robinson and her son in September 2023. Police impounded Robinson’s 2013 Dodge Charger for over three weeks. An internal affairs investigation found officers ‘improperly identified’ the vehicle and that it was not released timely; some officers were referred for possible discipline. The city admitted no wrongdoing. The suit alleged police worked backward from reader data, using the car’s description rather than a license plate number. The ACLU said the case highlights concerns about the use of the city’s 100-plus camera system.

On March 20, 2025 U.S. District Judge Sharon Johnson Coleman in the Northern District of Illinois granted final approval to a nationwide class settlement of consolidated Illinois Biometric Information Privacy Act and other state-law claims against Clearview AI, which built a database of tens of billions of face images scraped from social media and other websites. Rather than a cash fund, the class receives a 23 percent equity stake in the company, valued at about $51.75 million on an agreed $225 million company valuation as of January 2024, with an option to take 17 percent of revenue through September 2027 instead. The value is contingent on the class being able to monetize the stake. The deal followed the ACLU’s separate 2022 Illinois consent order barring Clearview from selling its database to private entities nationwide and to any Illinois entity, including police, for five years. European regulators have separately fined the company, including a €30.5 million Dutch penalty announced September 3, 2024.

The Pasco County Sheriff’s Office permanently ended its ‘Intelligence Led Policing’ predictive policing program and paid $105,000 to four plaintiffs to settle a federal civil rights lawsuit. The settlement agreement acknowledged the program exceeded officers’ implied license to knock on doors and perform offender checks, interfering with the plaintiffs’ First, Fourth, and Fourteenth Amendment rights. Plaintiff Darlene Deegan had been harassed for three years after her son was flagged by the program. The program used algorithms to flag ‘prolific offenders,’ as revealed by a 2020 Tampa Bay Times investigation. The sheriff’s office also agreed not to create a similar program.

A New Jersey man agreed to a $300,000 settlement of his federal lawsuit after being wrongly imprisoned for 10 days due to a facial recognition misidentification. The suit concerned the Woodbridge police department’s use of facial recognition technology. Attorney Sexton compared the department’s handling to early GPS users who drove off a cliff, saying, ‘It was like this magic thing. You’re kind of bewitched by the technology.’

On June 28, 2024 the City of Detroit and Robert Williams formalized a settlement of Williams v. City of Detroit, the ACLU-backed suit over his January 2020 arrest. Detroit police had matched his driver’s licence photo to security video of a 2018 shoplifting at a Shinola store; he was arrested outside his home in front of his family and held for about 30 hours. His case was the first publicly reported wrongful arrest attributed to a false face-recognition match. The city agreed to pay $300,000. Under the court-enforceable agreement, Detroit police may no longer arrest anyone solely on a face-recognition result or on a photo lineup built from one; a match may serve only as a lead requiring independent corroboration. The department must also review cases from 2017 to 2023 in which the technology was used and notify prosecutors of any arrest made without independent evidence. The ACLU called it the strongest police policy on the technology in the country.

On April 11, 2024, Toledo police officer Adrian Wilson stopped Brandon Upchurch after a Flock license plate reader misread the plate JLL 7637 on his red Dodge pickup as JLL 7362, a tan Chevrolet Malibu reported stolen. Wilson read the actual plate to dispatch, confirming the mismatch, but continued the stop. Backup officers arrived, and a police dog bit Upchurch. He was charged with obstructing and resisting arrest; charges were later dismissed. An internal investigation cleared the officers of wrongdoing regarding the dog attack, but Wilson received a verbal reprimand for failing to verify the plate. Upchurch sued for at least $75,000; a settlement has been agreed but awaits Toledo City Council approval.

In April 2024, a Flock camera in Toledo misread the number “7” on Brandon Upchurch’s license plate as “2”, matching it to a stolen vehicle. Police stopped Upchurch and deployed a dog, which mauled him. He was arrested and later released. Charges of obstructing official business and resisting arrest were dismissed. Upchurch filed a civil lawsuit and settled for $35,000 with no admission of wrongdoing.

On February 5, 2024, the family’s attorney announced that the City of Aurora, Colorado, had agreed to a $1.9 million settlement with Brittney Gilliam, who was pulled over in 2020 with four children in the car and ordered out at gunpoint. Officers had believed the car was stolen. The plate number matched a stolen motorcycle, but the motorcycle was registered in Montana and the car carried Colorado plates. Reports say an automated license plate reader flagged the plate and officers did not check the state before conducting a felony stop. Children were handcuffed on the pavement. Video of the stop circulated widely. The city paid the settlement from public funds. Reports do not name the ALPR vendor.

In July 2023, the city of Charlotte paid $10,000 to settle a wrongful arrest claim from a woman. Police used an automated license plate reader from NDI Technologies in June 2021 to link her car to a suspect with a similar name, leading to a brief detention. The city admitted no wrongdoing.

On Dec. 21, 2022, the city of Fayetteville, North Carolina, agreed to pay $60,000 to settle Jacqueline McNeill’s lawsuit alleging civil rights violations by police detectives. McNeill was arrested July 20, 2022, after license plate reader technology misidentified her vehicle as involved in a violent crime. She was held for several hours before detectives realized they had photographed two similar cars and arrested the wrong person. As part of the settlement, the department made no admission of liability, retired Police Chief Gina Hawkins provided a written apology and said the incident would lead to better training.

On July 23, 2022, Española, New Mexico, police stopped a car driven by Jaclynn Gonzales, then 21, with her 12-year-old sister as a passenger, after a Flock Safety camera flagged the plate as belonging to a vehicle stolen from Rio Rancho. The plate ended in a 2, which the camera read as a 7; the two plates differed by one character. A sergeant ordered Gonzales out at gunpoint before dispatch had confirmed the plate. An officer asked the child whether she had weapons, handcuffed her and placed her in a patrol vehicle. Officers then checked the plate and VIN and found the mismatch. Both sisters sued the city in state district court on January 3, 2024. The Rio Grande Sun reported the city settled the case in June 2025, paying $20,000 to each sister, part of eight settlements totaling more than $1.3 million.

In June 2022, Marin County and its sheriff settled a lawsuit brought by three community activists with ACLU of Northern California and EFF backing. The complaint said the sheriff’s office had, since 2014, shared automated license plate reader data with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, other federal agencies and hundreds of out-of-state agencies, in violation of SB 34 and the California Values Act. Under the settlement, the sheriff agreed to stop sharing the data with agencies outside California.

Albany County, Wyoming, reached a $1.2 million settlement with the family of Robbie Ramirez, who was fatally shot by Deputy Derek Colling in November 2018. The settlement, dated May 2, 2022, came amid allegations that body and dash camera footage was tampered with. Original videos were deleted by a sheriff’s lieutenant in December 2019, violating a five-year records-retention policy. As part of the settlement, a judge issued an order stating there was no legal basis for evidence tampering.

On February 17, 2022, the ACLU and ACLU of Maryland reached a settlement with the Baltimore Police Department in a lawsuit challenging the department’s aerial surveillance program, under which planes equipped with high-resolution cameras operated by Persistent Surveillance Systems flew over the entire city at least 40 hours a week. The settlement followed a Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals ruling that found the pilot program unconstitutional. The settlement blocks the city from implementing a similar program in the future, stops police from accessing collected data except in connection with existing prosecutions, and requires the destruction of all records from the program.

The City of Tacoma agreed to pay $311,607 to settle a public records lawsuit over its handling of records about a cell site simulator (Stingray) manufactured by Harris Corporation. The settlement, reached September 29, 2021, includes court-awarded penalties and an additional $75,000. The lawsuit was filed in 2016 by the ACLU on behalf of three residents, alleging violations of Washington’s Public Records Act. The dispute involved 11 withheld records and an operator’s manual. The city stated it believed resolving the matter was in the best interests of all parties.

On August 23, 2021, the California Department of Justice announced a stipulated judgment with the City of Bakersfield and the Bakersfield Police Department. A DOJ investigation found a pattern of unreasonable force, stops, searches, and arrests, among other violations. The five-year agreement requires BPD to revise use-of-force policies, prohibit electronic control weapons on handcuffed individuals, improve data collection, and be overseen by an independent monitor. BPD had already outfitted officers with body-worn cameras and volunteered to collect data under the Racial and Identity Profiling Act.

In April 2021, Jason Burkleo was driving to his security job in Atherton, California, when the town’s automated license plate reader misread his dirt-obscured plate, reading the letters ‘H’ as ‘M’, and matched it to a reported stolen vehicle. Police treated the alert as a high-risk felony stop, ordered him at gunpoint to throw his keys out the window, get out and lie on his stomach, and handcuffed him. Burkleo sued the police department and the officers, alleging unreasonable seizure and excessive force. The case settled for $45,000. EFF lists the case among documented ALPR misreads that ended with guns drawn on innocent drivers.

On May 3, 2020, Reno Police Department used DataWorks Plus facial recognition software to match a surveillance photo to an innocent individual, resulting in a wrongful arrest. Officers relied on the algorithmic match without independent corroboration to secure an arrest warrant. Criminal charges were later dropped. The City of Reno settled the resulting civil rights lawsuit for $100,000 and agreed to policy changes requiring independent corroborating evidence before facial recognition matches can be used as probable cause.

On November 25, 2018, Contra Costa County sheriff’s deputies stopped Brian Hofer, chair of Oakland’s Privacy Advisory Commission, and his brother at gunpoint after an automated license plate reader alerted that their rental car was stolen. The Getaround Kia had been stolen from San Jose in October and recovered, but the recovery had not been cleared from the hot list. Deputies released the pair after sorting out the record; no one was booked. Hofer filed a federal civil rights suit against the deputies, alleging warrantless search and excessive force. KTVU reported the sheriff’s office paid him $49,500 in an August settlement. EFF later cited the case as an example of an alert generated by outdated data rather than a camera misread.

On March 30, 2009, San Francisco police pulled over Denise Green, a 47-year-old black woman, after the department’s automated license plate reader misread her plate and matched it to a stolen vehicle. Between four and six officers pointed guns at her and ordered her out of the car. After she was searched and her car searched, the police let her go. The ACLU later reported the reader had misread a ‘3’ as a ‘7’. A district court found against her; the Ninth Circuit reinstated the case in May 2014. In 2015 the Board of Supervisors passed Ordinance 181-15 authorizing a $495,000 settlement of her lawsuit.