If you were arrested after an AI facial recognition camera wrongly flagged you as a trespasser, how far would you go to get justice?
Jason Killinger is looking to go all the way. The Nevada man recently filed a lawsuit against the city of Reno, after a police officer named Richard Jager placed him under arrest for 12 hours on the guidance of an AI surveillance system.
The filing naming the city of Reno is the latest escalation in Killinger’s months-long quest for retribution, coming after federal Judge Miranda Du agreed the city could be named in his suit, the Reno Gazette Journal reported. A lawsuit against Jager is already ongoing, which will now include Reno among its defendants.
While placing some bets at an area casino, Killinger was previously flagged as a “100 percent match” for another man who had been banned from the gaming floor at an earlier date. After being detained by casino security, Killinger was placed under arrest by officer Jager, who accused the innocent man of using a fake ID to evade casino staff.
The cop made a number of errors, the lawsuit alleged, including refusing to check Killinger for alternative forms of ID (he had at least three in his wallet at the time, he says.)
Yet the new lawsuit takes things much further, blaming the city of Reno itself for failing to train police officers properly on the legal use of AI facial recognition tools. This situation, Killinger’s attorneys allege, has led to “thousands of unlawful arrests” using facial ID technology, the Gazette reported.
“Jager’s conduct was not a sporadic incident involving the wrongful actions of a rogue employee,” the updated lawsuit declares, “but the result of a widespread custom and practice involving hundreds of municipal employees making thousands of arrests in the same manner over a period of years.”
It’s not the first incident where cops trusted machines over their brains, and it’s far from the most horrific. Last year, an innocent grandmother was jailed for over six months after Fargo police, using a generative AI system to generate investigative leads, flagged her as the perpetrator of ATM fraud (bank records later showed she was 1,200 miles away at the time of the crime.)
While Killinger’s attorneys haven’t named a specific reward they’d like to see, Reno taxpayers could be on the hook for punitive damages, attorney fees, and compensation for injuries he sustained while being handcuffed.
If Killinger wins, it could set a major precedent for wrongful arrests in an era where AI algorithms, not humans, are increasingly doing the policing.
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