Wrongly Arrested Casino Guest Seeks Names of 168 Others Flagged by Facial Recognition

A Nevada truck driver arrested after a casino facial recognition system misidentified him has asked a federal judge to order the City of Reno to hand over unredacted records for 168 other people the same system flagged.

Jason Killinger wants arrest reports and declarations of probable cause naming everyone cited or transported to the Reno Police Department following a facial recognition identification at the Peppermill Casino. His lawyers requested the records in April. The city produced more than 1,000 pages but stripped out names and other identifying information, which the motion says it did without ever asking the court for a protective order.

The dispute sits inside the lawsuit Killinger brought against the city and police officer Richard Jager over his arrest in September 2023. Casino security flagged him as a 100 percent match for Michael Ellis, a man banned from the property months earlier for sleeping on the premises. Killinger produced a valid Nevada Real ID, a Peppermill player’s card and a debit card in his own name, and was accused of using fraudulent identification. He is four inches taller than Ellis and has blue eyes rather than hazel. He was held for nearly nine hours, more than three of them in handcuffs, which the lawsuit says left him with bruising and shoulder pain. According to the complaint, Jager filed a report claiming Killinger had presented conflicting identification even after a fingerprint check at the Washoe County jail confirmed who he was.

Killinger’s lawyers describe the 168 individuals as percipient witnesses whose experiences could show whether Reno had a wider practice of arrests resting on facial recognition matches. Their identities also bear on the relief he seeks, they argue, because he is asking for an injunction and has signalled he may bring class claims. He settled separately with the Peppermill before suing Jager and later adding the city, alleging it failed to train officers on the technology.

In a response filed earlier this month, Deputy City Attorney Alice Herbolsheimer said the city had already compromised by producing the reports at all despite disputing their relevance, and that the casino supplied only arrest dates, times and initials rather than names. She also said only 16 of the 168 arrests happened before Killinger’s, so the rest could not have put the city on notice of a problem. The judge has not ruled.

Bloomington, Minnesota, took a different route in a comparable case last week, settling a facial recognition wrongful-arrest lawsuit rather than contesting it.

Sources: Casino.org

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By the ID Tech Editorial Team