The American Civil Liberties Union has filed a lawsuit on behalf of Robert Dillon, a 52-year-old Fort Myers, Florida resident who was wrongfully arrested after police relied on an incorrect facial recognition match to obtain an arrest warrant.
Dillon was arrested in August 2024 for a crime he says he did not commit in a city he had never visited. He was accused of attempting to lure a child at a fast-food restaurant in Jacksonville Beach, more than 300 miles from his home, after a Jacksonville Sheriff’s Office employee ran grainy surveillance photos through an AI-assisted facial recognition program that identified Dillon as a possible match.
Using that match and the statement of a restaurant employee who selected Dillon’s photo from a lineup, Jacksonville Beach police obtained an arrest warrant. According to the ACLU’s complaint, police omitted key facts from the warrant application: the suspect was described as a “regular” at the restaurant, Dillon lived five hours away and told police he had never been to Jacksonville Beach, and an automatic license plate reader search showed no hits on his vehicle anywhere near the restaurant.
“The night I spent in jail after they arrested me for a crime I did not commit still haunts me to this day,” Dillon said.
Prosecutors have since dropped the charges and the arrest record has been expunged, but Dillon says the consequences persist. He was forced to borrow money and pledge his truck title to post bond, lost income during months of criminal prosecution, and was publicly identified through a mugshot that remains accessible online.
The lawsuit names the Jacksonville Beach Police Department, Jacksonville Sheriff’s Office, Pinellas County Sheriff’s Office, and individual officers. It seeks both monetary damages and policy changes. The Pinellas County Sheriff’s Office operates the statewide facial recognition system used to misidentify Dillon.
Dillon is one of at least 15 people known to have been wrongfully arrested in the United States due to police reliance on facial recognition technology. Detroit settled a similar case and tightened its facial recognition policies, while a Reno man filed a federal lawsuit alleging police treated facial recognition matches as sufficient grounds for probable cause.
Sources: ACLU, Jacksonville Today
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By the ID Tech Editorial Team
