Woman says Detroit police wrongly arrested her based on facial recognition, files lawsuit

DETROIT (FOX 2) - A Detroit woman says she was wrongfully arrested a year ago because of faulty facial recognition and has filed a lawsuit for her detainment. However, Detroit said facial recognition is unrelated to her arrest.

LaDonna 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."

Once at the station, she was forced to give a DNA sample and fingerprints before being released after eight hours.

"If you go out and you compare someone’s photo to someone, you go knock on their door, handcuff them take them to the police station, they almost lose their job, you arrest them in front of their children, this is bad," Land said.

In the lawsuit, Land says police conducted a database search and Crutchfield matched the suspect that was seen shooting a weapon.

The other side:

Assistant Detroit Police Chief Charles Fitzgerald says officers involved used photos to compare the woman to the suspect.

"This case has nothing to do with facial (recognition)," he said. "There was an investigation done. The investigation led back to a partial plate. It was a house on the east side. That east side home let us back to our plaintiff. When they compare the image they got from a video just an image. They didn’t do any facial rec. It let us to this individual."

Land rejects the claim that the license plate was connected to Crutchfield.

A court date has not yet been set.

The backstory:

Detroit's use of facial recognition to arrest suspects has been under scrutiny for years, as opponents say the technology misidentifies African Americans more than others.

In 2024, a Farmington hills man reached a settlement with Detroit Police, four years after he was wrongfully arrested at his home. He was one of several people who were wrongly arrested.

As part of the settlement, Detroit Police is no longer allowed to arrest people based solely on facial recognition results or the results of photo lineups directly following a facial recognition search.