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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.

Henrico County, Virginia announced termination of its Flock Safety automatic license plate reader contract, which was set to run until Nov. 14. The county had spent about $1 million on the program since November 2022 and installed over 120 ALPRs. Officials cited privacy concerns, with no financial penalty for early termination.

Snohomish County, Washington paid $35,000 to settle a lawsuit in September after failing to release images from Flock Safety cameras. The settlement, which admitted no liability, was described by the county as a “risk management decision.” It is part of over $335,000 in settlements that attorney Tim Hall has secured from 16 Washington jurisdictions for client Jose Rodriguez, who filed 53 public records requests about automated license plate reader technology.

A federal jury ruled against Bexar County after Alek Schott was pulled over in March 2022 on Interstate 35 when his license plate was flagged by a reader. Schott was detained for 76 minutes and a K-9 search found nothing. The jury awarded $76 and found the stop violated his Fourth Amendment rights. Attorneys for Schott are seeking an injunction against such stops.

On September 15, 2026, Angela Lipps filed a federal lawsuit against the City of Fargo and Detective Lucas Heck, seeking $10 million in damages. The complaint alleges Heck relied on a flawed facial recognition match and ignored exculpatory evidence to bring bank fraud charges, leading to her arrest at gunpoint and detention for nearly six months. The charges were dismissed in December 2025 after bank records showed she was in Tennessee during the thefts. The suit says Fargo lacked policies governing facial recognition use at the time.

Craig Harriman filed a third lawsuit in Aroostook County Superior Court against the town of Houlton, Maine, alleging officials have not released public data from surveillance cameras removed earlier in 2026. The filing follows multiple Freedom of Access Act requests and two previous court appeals. Harriman seeks the immediate production of remaining records, including emails about the town’s facial recognition video surveillance system, and written explanations for any withheld documents. The town previously depleted its legal budget in 2025 handling FOAA lawsuits.

Lindsey has filed a federal civil rights lawsuit against two Florida Highway Patrol troopers, alleging false arrest, wrongful imprisonment, and malicious prosecution. The lawsuit follows an arrest tied to a Flock license plate camera hit. The State Attorney’s Office declined to prosecute all eight charges on May 22, 2026. Her complaint describes the Flock evidence as exculpatory, not inculpatory.

On September 9, 2026, the St. Paul City Council withdrew resolution RES 26-1399, which would have authorized the police department to apply for a $200,000 federal grant to add three docked drones. Council President Rebecca Noecker said the withdrawal was due to unanswered questions about data storage and flight locations. The legislative file shows 38 written public comments, most opposed. The department had launched three Skydio X10 drones on May 30; on September 7, one located a missing child in a pond. The department had not published the program’s cost.

On September 8, 2026, the Lebanon, Ohio, city council voted to immediately shut off and cover its 20 Flock Safety automated license plate readers. The vote followed Flock Safety’s failure to respond to a letter containing 54 questions about data retention and access within three weeks. Mayor Mark Messer said he lost confidence in the company after it did not reply. The council also gave city officials seven business days to determine whether the city can exit its contract without paying $60,000 for the final year. Flock Safety did not respond to a request for comment.

On September 3, 2026, a Boston Police Department drone crashed onto a parked Mazda 3 in Brighton, damaging its rear windshield and trunk and leaving the aircraft in pieces on private property. The crash occurred less than a week after the department began operating its Drone as First Responder program, which it had announced on August 28 in partnership with Motorola Solutions and BRINC. BRINC collected the wreckage. The car’s registered owner, a 42-year-old Brighton man, was not home at the time. Under 14 CFR § 107.9, the FAA requires remote drone pilots to report any accident causing more than $500 in property damage within 10 days. The program began operating in the final weekend of August.

The Minneapolis City Council voted 6-6 to reject a no-cost 75-day drones-as-first-responder pilot with Skydio, Inc. Council Vice President Jamal Osman, a co-sponsor, cast the deciding no vote after learning Skydio supplies equipment to the Israeli military and assists the Department of Homeland Security on immigration enforcement and surveillance. The pilot would have stationed drones at Minneapolis Fire Station 14 to stream video to 911 dispatchers and police officers. Osman said Skydio works with ICE, which he said terrorized his community, and with a genocidal military government. Supporters said the drones could improve public safety.

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.

In September 2026, a Suffolk Superior Court judge ruled that the Massachusetts State Police must disclose records related to its use of automatic license plate readers (ALPRs), including camera locations and audit records. The ruling came in a case filed in November 2023. The decision requires the state police to release information about its ALPR operations. This is a result of ongoing litigation concerning surveillance technology used by law enforcement.

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.

Body camera footage published by 404 Media shows Florida police officer Lamar Roman explaining he used department databases and license plate reader cameras to stalk a woman he met on the set of Apple TV’s Bad Monkey. Roman illegally looked up her information, placed her plate on a police ‘hot list’ that alerted him to ALPR hits, sped to follow her, and pulled her over. He said, ‘I saw a shiny thing, teasing and all that.’ An investigator told the victim that deputies had been told ‘that’s not what it’s for. You see a hot chick, you don’t look them up in a database.’ Roman used an ALPR system called Guardian made by Turing.

Amazon Web Services was added as a defendant in a federal lawsuit filed by Christopher Gatlin, who spent 17 months in jail after St. Louis police used Amazon Rekognition on a grainy, blurry image of a masked suspect. The amended complaint, filed August 13, 2026, alleges poor police work, inadequate training, misconduct and a defective facial recognition system. AWS said its terms of service prohibit police use of Rekognition’s face comparison feature in criminal investigations.

The Metro Nashville Police Department’s ‘Drone as First Responder’ trial program ended Friday, after operating for 30 flight days since May 26. Police spokesperson Brooke Reese confirmed the program ran on a loan basis with Skydio and without a signed contract. Councilmember Emily Benedict said the rollout involved ‘irregular timelines and murky legal footing,’ and that ‘It’s not right that taxpayer dollars are being handled this loosely.’ New legislation, BL2026-1498, would narrow the ‘temporary basis’ exemption that let the program launch without council vote, limiting such deployments to 30 days unless approved by resolution after a public hearing.

On August 4, 2026, Lawyers for Civil Rights filed a lawsuit in Suffolk Superior Court against the Boston Police Department and the Suffolk County District Attorney’s Office. The suit seeks the release of body-camera and dashboard-camera footage from a fatal police shooting in Roxbury on March 11. Both agencies denied public records requests, citing an investigatory exemption. The lawsuit argues this exemption does not outweigh the public interest in the footage. It asks the court to order release and award attorney’s fees.

Seattle Police Department fired a public records employee after an audit found she arbitrarily pushed back deadlines, lied to requestors, and allowed 911 audio recordings to be destroyed. The employee, hired in 1999, was terminated after a manager found 60 requests with serious issues, including at least two dozen bodycam requests never submitted for redaction. She told requestors she was waiting for a video specialist, which was false. In 22 requests, she failed to preserve 911 audio, which is deleted after 90 days. She claimed unawareness of the retention schedule. The city could face a seven-figure settlement under the Public Records Act.

On July 30, 2026, the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department (LVMPD) still had not responded to a request for body-camera footage made more than 13 months earlier, according to a lawsuit filed by the ACLU of Nevada. The request concerned footage from a June 11, 2025, protest. The suit alleges LVMPD demanded a $6,811.33 upfront payment, charged about $85 per hour in one invoice, then switched to $5.67 per minute and later $5.80 per minute for the same footage. The ACLU seeks civil penalties under Nevada’s Public Records Act.

The Minneapolis City Council deadlocked 6-6 on a proposal to contract with Skydio Inc. for a ‘drones as first responders’ program. The program failed to advance, meaning the city will not move forward with Skydio as the vendor. Residents and activists raised concerns about privacy and Skydio’s ties to the Israeli military. Council Member Jamal Osman said he supported the program but couldn’t support Skydio and urged officials to return with a different vendor.

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.”

A Canadian truck driver, Gurdeep Gill, plans to sue the city of Temple, Texas, after a police drone crashed into his semi truck on June 2, 2026, on Interstate 35 at West Nugent Avenue, sending him to the hospital. The Cochran law firm filed a governmental notice of liability claim against the city on Gill’s behalf. The city has not released crash-related documents despite multiple records requests, and the Texas attorney general will decide whether the records must be released. A DJI Matrice 30T drone was put out of service around the time of the crash.

A class action complaint filed in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Michigan alleges Thomson Reuters publicly displays five sequential digits of social security numbers through its CLEAR and Westlaw PeopleMap platforms, violating Michigan’s Social Security Number Privacy Act. The plaintiff seeks $1,000 per class member plus attorney fees. The complaint notes a prior similar suit, Nyman v. Thomson Reuters, was dismissed in state court.

In March 2026, Fargo Police Chief Dave Zibolski told reporters that the department identified ‘a couple of errors’ in an investigation into bank thefts that led to the wrongful arrest of Angela Lipps. West Fargo police used AI facial recognition to identify Lipps based on a photo from a fake ID used by the suspect. Zibolski said use of the West Fargo AI facial recognition system would not have been allowed and has since been prohibited. He said the department would take ‘more steps’ and ‘more scrutiny’ in future cases.

Brooklyn Park City Council voted 5-0 to add $4.6 million to its Axon contract for a Drone as First Responder program. The 10-year contract total is now $12.4 million. The program includes 10 Skydio drones housed in five docking stations that self-dispatch to reported crimes. Footage will be deleted after three days, and a transparency portal will show deployments. Costs are covered until 2028.

San Mateo County’s Project Sherlock, a $12 million AI policing system developed by C3 AI, has largely failed to deliver promised investigative benefits after three years. A timeline projected 14 agencies to be fully live by January 2025, but seven agencies—Atherton, Belmont, East Palo Alto, Foster City, Menlo Park, San Bruno, and South San Francisco—report lacking a fully functional product. A senior Sheriff’s Office analyst said: ‘My no BS assessment is that we’ve been working with them for two years and they have a barely functional product.’ The system has faced delays, login bugs, and data integration issues.

In September 2025, an $875,000 settlement in the Evans v. City of San Diego case was approved after an unarmed man was shot with rubber bullets and attacked by a K-9. The separate First Amendment Coalition v. City of San Diego lawsuit remains pending, alleging the city withheld body-worn camera footage required for release within 45 days under California’s SB 1421 and AB 748.

In July 2025, US marshals arrested Angela Lipps at her home in Tennessee while she was babysitting. She was held for nearly four months without bail, then extradited to North Dakota and charged with four counts of unauthorized use of personal identifying information and four counts of theft. The charges were dropped after her lawyer provided bank records showing she was in Tennessee at the time of the fraud. The complaint alleges a Fargo police investigator used AI facial recognition software that returned Lipps’s social media photo as a lead. The detective requested an arrest warrant despite Lipps not resembling the suspect and having never been to North Dakota. The lawsuit seeks $10m in damages.

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.

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.

The Sacramento County Grand Jury’s 2023-2024 report found that the Sacramento Police Department shares automated license plate reader (ALPR) data with law enforcement agencies in Washington, Oregon, Nevada, and Arizona. The Grand Jury concluded this practice violates California Senate Bill 34, which prohibits sharing ALPR data with out-of-state entities. The report notes that SPD representatives met with the Attorney General’s staff to discuss compliance, but the Grand Jury still concluded that SPD is not complying with SB 34.

In spring 2024, the California Supreme Court refused to hear Chula Vista’s appeal, affirming an appellate ruling that the city’s blanket refusal to disclose police drone video was too broad. The case began in 2021 when La Prensa publisher Art Castañares filed a public records request for drone footage. The ruling sets a statewide precedent affecting over a dozen California cities using or exploring first-responder drones. Castañares said, ‘Our lawsuit created a statewide legal precedent that improves the public’s access to police records that agencies have tried to shield from disclosure.’

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.

On December 5, 2023, the Dallas County District Attorney’s Office stated that Dallas police deleted body camera videos from 2016–2021 due to retention policies, potentially affecting thousands of cases. A March notification led to a review of 113 trial cases involving complainant deaths; 572 of nearly 9,000 video files had been deleted. A November 2022 review found about 52,000 digital files improperly categorized. DPD increased retention to a two-year minimum and added staff. The DA’s office said no deleted video had yet proven material.

Seattle’s Office of Inspector General published a surveillance technology usage review covering ALPR deployments in 2021 and 2022. The report found 976 misreads in 2021 and 948 in 2022, approximately one misread for every five unverified hits. It documented two erroneous vehicle stops caused by outdated or misleading hotlist information. In one, a stolen license plate had been swapped onto a similarly described vehicle, leading to a firearms-drawn stop of an innocent driver. In another, officers stopped a vehicle reported stolen but recovered earlier; the recovery had not been recorded. The OIG recommended that SPD develop a deployment strategy that accounts for disproportionality in data collection.

Montgomery County, Maryland police requested $350,000 for a “Drone as First Responder” pilot program to send drones to certain 911 calls. At a September 12, 2023 community meeting in Wheaton, Capt. Jason Cokinos said the department faces a staffing crisis and needs technology to improve response times. Drones would be placed in Wheaton and Silver Spring, each covering up to a 3-mile radius, with pilots in Rockville. The department already has FAA permission to search for missing people and will seek permission to operate at 400 feet. Cokinos said drones will not use facial recognition or audio intercepts. Council member Natali Fani-González supports the program, citing a crime crisis in Wheaton.

The City of New Orleans canceled a $6 million contract with Swedish firm Hexagon for a cloud-based 911 records system. Signed in early 2021 for OnCall Records, the project aimed to combine 20 police records systems. The city cited technical delays, no workable data access plan, and inability to generate compliant reports. The system might have increased time to write police reports. The city is evaluating alternative systems.

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 March 10, 2023, the city of Shreveport disclosed that its Real Time Crime Center cameras do not comply with state and federal law because they are insecure and vulnerable to hacking. Mayor Tom Arceneaux said on KEEL radio, “I don’t think they are useful for anything because they are capable of being hacked into. We will probably eat them or sell them for scrap.” Sources estimated between 50 and 90 cameras were installed under former Mayor Adrian Perkins’ administration. The system must be replaced, and city administrators were warned of the noncompliance before purchase.

The Seattle Police Department cancelled its contract with Truleo, a firm that uses artificial intelligence to analyze body-camera video, on Feb. 7, 2023. The department had renewed the two-year, $400,000 contract on Jan. 15 after a trial showed promise. Chief Operating Officer Brian Maxey cancelled it after privacy concerns and criticism from the police union. The department had spent $220,500 of public funds on the contract, which had not been recouped as of March. The cancellation is under scrutiny following a recording of a police union official making comments about a woman killed by an officer.

Motherboard obtained procurement records showing the U.S. Secret Service paid about $400,000 each year from 2020 to 2022 for access to LexisNexis’ Virtual Crime Center, a system that links public records with agency data. The article also notes purchases by the State Department, FDA, and other agencies. LexisNexis sells the product under the Accurint brand for law enforcement and government.

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.

In late 2022, Chesterfield County’s automated record deletion system purged police radio recordings related to Charlotte Carter’s arrests, including communications one hour before and after each arrest. Carter had filed a FOIA request in November 2022 seeking those records, along with a lawsuit challenging a $24,000 cost estimate. The deletions occurred after the FOIA petition was filed but before the county disclosed the records no longer existed. In March 2026, Carter’s attorney moved for sanctions against the county and county attorney Julie Seyfarth. Trial arguments are scheduled for June 2026.

On November 25, 2022, an officer with the DeKalb County Police Department pulled over Randal Quran Reid and took him into custody based on an arrest warrant from Jefferson Parish, Louisiana. The warrant had been issued on July 18, 2022, after Deputy Andrew Bartholomew used facial recognition technology to incorrectly identify Reid as a theft suspect. Reid was held for six days without bond. The warrant was recalled on November 30, 2022, after officers noticed a mole on Reid’s face that the purse thief did not have.

In July 2022, Cook County held a public hearing on ICE’s use of data brokers. Records obtained by Just Futures Law and Mijente showed ICE’s Chicago field office ran over 13,000 people searches on LexisNexis between March and September 2021, generating over 1,800 reports. Cook County indirectly shares jail data with ICE through data broker Appriss, which supplies LexisNexis. LexisNexis holds a contract with ICE worth up to $22.1 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.

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.

An independent investigation by Kirkland & Ellis LLP found that a backup technician’s errors during a server migration caused the permanent loss of approximately 20.68 terabytes of Dallas Police Department data. The data included family violence and FUSION records. Only 3.26 terabytes were recovered from other sources. The report states the data is unrecoverable in its original format. The technician deleted archived data from cloud storage after incorrectly copying placeholder files to on-premises servers.

The Lens investigation found that the New Orleans Real Time Crime Center cost at least $10.4 million since 2017, based on confirmed purchase orders and payroll records. The figure includes $6.1 million in spending on equipment and services from Cox and vendors Active Solutions, Motorola Solutions, and LaTech, plus $4.3 million in payroll for 26 employees from 2017 through July 2021. The Lens reported that the true total is likely higher because the city provided incomplete and inaccurate records, and the city said it could not isolate RTCC expenditures from other Homeland Security spending.

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.

Chicago’s Office of Inspector General reported that ShotSpotter alerts rarely lead to confirmed gun-related evidence. Analysing the alerts from January through May, the office found that of 50,176 notifications, only 9.1% indicated evidence of a gun-related offense and only 2.1% linked directly to investigatory stops. The report said alerts can change officers’ behavior in patrolling areas. Deputy Inspector General Deborah Witzburg said there is little data linking alerts to recovered evidence or stops. The report came amid the city’s extended $33 million contract with ShotSpotter for two years.

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.

On this date, the American Civil Liberties Union filed suit against the Detroit Police Department on behalf of Robert Williams, described as the first US person wrongfully arrested based on facial recognition. Williams was arrested in 2019 after a facial recognition system matched a grainy security image to his driver’s license photo. Police showed a photo lineup to a security guard who had not witnessed the shoplifting, and the guard selected Williams. He spent 30 hours in detention. The prosecutor’s office later apologized. The lawsuit alleges police used unreliable facial recognition despite known racial bias. A second man, Michael Oliver, sued last year.

On April 5, 2021, the city of Dallas learned that a police employee had accidentally deleted 22 terabytes of digital case files while migrating data from a cloud-based archive to an on-premise server. Police recovered 14 terabytes; the remaining 8 terabytes are believed permanently deleted. The files included audio recordings, case notes, images and videos. The deletion affected prosecution of cases with offense dates before July 28, 2020. At least one murder trial was delayed. The police department attributed the deletion to human error and announced new safeguards, including requiring two employees for file migrations and a 14-day recycle bin.

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.

Baltimore’s Board of Estimates voted unanimously Wednesday to cancel the city’s contract for aerial surveillance planes operated by Persistent Surveillance Systems. The planes had flown their final Baltimore flight on Oct. 31, 2020. Lisa Walden, a city attorney representing the Baltimore Police Department, said allowing the contract to continue would be ‘less transparent’ and that the city is working to delete 85% of collected data, retaining 15% for ongoing investigations. The cancellation came as the city faced an ACLU lawsuit over the program. Mayor Brandon Scott said preliminary reviews showed no significant difference between crimes investigated with the use of the planes and those without.

The Hayward City Council postponed a vote on the police department’s proposal to purchase four drones. City staff pulled the item after discussion about public vetting and privacy policy. Councilmember Al Mendall said the public should comment on managing such technologies. The police department estimated the initial cost of the drones and up to eight operating licenses at up to $50,000. The department had sought the drones for more than a year; a council infrastructure committee had recommended approval in October 2019 but urged more public discussion. The Alameda County Sheriff’s Department has used drones for five years; Union City and Newark also have drone programs.

Brookhaven, Georgia, approved funding for the Brookhaven Police Department’s UAS unit, making it the first city in the Southeast to adopt a drone first-responder program. The unit will consist of four drones deployed to witness crimes, document scenes, and provide aerial views. The program costs $83,700 in its first year plus $22,600 annually, funded by coronavirus relief funds. Police estimate drone response costs about 10% of dispatching an officer and patrol vehicle. Drones stream HD video to the department’s crime center and have thermal imaging. The department will develop policy preventing intentional recording where privacy is expected.

The Broward Sheriff’s Office lost $500,000 in state funding to expand its Real Time Crime Center into a Fusion Center. Gov. Ron DeSantis vetoed more than $1 billion from Florida’s $93.2 billion budget due to COVID-19 impacts. The original request was $5 million; the Legislature had approved $500,000 for the project. The funding would have supported software integration, hardware, and renovations. Broward Sheriff Gregory Tony had touted the center as a step forward in protecting the community. The RTCC provides real-time monitoring of schools and buildings.

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.

Chula Vista Police expanded its Drone as First Responder program, adding a second launch site atop Bayview Behavioral Health Hospital. The addition extends drone coverage to the 17 square miles of the city west of Interstate 805, an area responsible for 70 percent of 911 calls. Since the program launched in October 2017, drones have been dispatched 1,509 times and assisted in 224 arrests. The department said expanding coverage citywide would cost about $600,000, but no funding source has been identified. Officials cited privacy measures, including a publicly accessible website tracking drone flight paths.

On January 23, 2020, the Chicago Office of Inspector General (OIG) released an advisory on the Chicago Police Department’s (CPD) predictive risk models, the Strategic Subject List and Crime and Victimization Risk Model. CPD received $3.8 million in federal grants and spent ten years developing the models, which scored individuals on likelihood of being a party to violence. The department decommissioned the program in November 2019 after grant funding ended. OIG raised concerns about unreliable risk scores, improperly trained personnel, and lack of access controls. Inspector General Joe Ferguson said, “We reiterate our hope that the Department will apply these lessons going forward.”

The Chicago Police Department decommissioned its ‘party to violence’ risk-model program — the Strategic Subject List and its successor, the Crime and Victimization Risk Model — on November 1, 2019, after telling the Office of Inspector General in August 2019 it intended to do so. On January 23, 2020 the OIG published an advisory reporting that CPD had received $3.8 million in federal grants and spent ten years developing the sequential models, which assigned scores predicting the likelihood a person would be the victim or offender in a shooting. The advisory’s areas of concern included the unreliability of risk scores and tiers, improperly trained sworn personnel, a lack of controls on internal and external access, and interventions that may have attached negative consequences to arrests that never produced convictions. The algorithm was built by the Illinois Institute of Technology under a Department of Justice Bureau of Justice Assistance grant. The databases held data on more than 300,000 people.

In a § 1983 excessive force lawsuit by Dustin Woods against officer Jason Scissons, the U.S. District Court for the District of Arizona ruled that the City of Prescott failed to preserve dashboard camera footage from the incident. The court found that dash cams in at least two police vehicles would have recorded relevant footage and that the city had a duty to preserve it. It imputed the spoliation to Scissons and allowed a jury instruction that if the jury finds the city destroyed the footage with intent to deprive Woods of its use, it may infer the footage was unfavorable to the city.

In June 2019, U.S. Customs and Border Protection subcontractor Perceptics was breached in what CBP called a malicious cyberattack. Images of travellers’ faces and license plates, contracting documents and other data were made publicly available on the internet. About 184,000 traveller images from CBP’s facial-recognition pilot were compromised, and at least 19 were posted to the dark web. The attackers also obtained contractual documents, program-management documents, emails, system configurations, schematics and implementation documentation related to CBP license-plate-reader programs. Perceptics had downloaded sensitive CBP data from an unencrypted device and transferred it to the company’s network, violating DHS security requirements. Perceptics was suspended from federal contracts, subcontracts, grants and loans in June 2019; the suspension was lifted in September 2019. A September 2020 DHS Inspector General report found CBP did not adequately safeguard the data, though no federal networks were compromised.

On March 8, 2019 the LAPD Office of the Inspector General released an audit of the department’s data-driven policing programs — PredPol, Operation LASER and the ELUCD survey platform — and presented it to the Police Commission on March 12. The audit found significant inconsistencies in how individuals were selected and retained in LASER’s chronic-offender program, found the programs lacked oversight and often strayed from stated goals, and concluded there was insufficient data to determine whether PredPol reduced crime; the department had used PredPol for roughly eight years. LAPD suspended its Chronic Offender program and database in August 2018 without announcing it. A memo dated April 15, 2020 said the department would discontinue PredPol immediately, citing the pandemic-driven freeze on new contracts.

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.

In February 2018, the D.C. Metropolitan Police Department purchased seven annual Dataminr licenses at a cost of almost $48,000, using State Homeland Security Grant program funds from the Department of Homeland Security. Six licenses went to the D.C. fusion center, and MPD had access to unlimited licenses for the first year, provided to the department’s Command Information Center.

Montgomery County, Virginia, suspended its police body camera program in November 2017 after three years of technical failures. Chief Deputy Sheriff Brad St. Clair said the cameras misidentified footage, recorded from accidental button presses, and interfered with in-car cameras. The department spent $33,000 on the cameras and is discussing reimbursement with vendor L3 Mobile Vision.

On June 29, 2016, a Newark police detective emailed MVC’s chair to say the city was suspending its contract with MVC because the firm’s ‘obligations to the Newark Police Division have not been met.’ Newark had paid MVC $25,000 before the contract was severed. Newark police said the city is partnering with Panasonic for a pilot body camera program. The suspension followed failures by MVC to host training sessions and provide working cameras.

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.