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Detroit again, three years after Robert Williams. Face recognition matched surveillance footage to Porcha Woodruff's 2015 mugshot, and the same pattern followed: the match became a photo lineup, the lineup became a warrant. She was eight months pregnant when officers arrived, was questioned for around eleven hours, and was taken to hospital with contractions and dehydration after being released. Nobody in the chain appears to have noted that the person on the footage was not visibly pregnant. Charges were dropped. Her civil suit was later dismissed, and Detroit changed its face recognition policy after her case and Williams's. She is at least the sixth person publicly known to have been wrongly arrested this way in the United States, and all six are Black.
Porcha Woodruff, in CNN
Woodruff, 32, was home around 8 a.m. on February 16, helping her 6- and 12-year-olds get ready for school when six Detroit police officers arrived at her door with an arrest warrant for carjacking and robbery. [...] She was eight months pregnant.
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