Severe harmFacial Recognition Wrongful ArrestFebruary 16, 2023United States

Wrongful Arrest of Porcha Woodruff, 8 Months Pregnant

Six police officers arrested Woodruff for robbery and carjacking after a facial recognition hit matched her 2015 mugshot to gas-station surveillance. She was eight months pregnant; the actual carjacker was not pregnant. Detained 11 hours, she experienced contractions in jail and was later hospitalized for stress-induced contractions and dehydration.

AI system:DataWorks Plus facial recognition

Impact

First known woman wrongfully arrested due to facial recognition; sixth publicly known US case, all Black. Charges dropped March 6, 2023 for insufficient evidence.

Outcome

Detroit Police Chief publicly apologized. Lawsuit contributed to Williams landmark settlement reforms and motivated state-level facial recognition legislation.

Sources

  1. Source 1NBC News / NYTwww.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/detroit-woman-sues-city-falsely-arrested-8-months-pregnant-due-facial-rcna98447
  2. Source 2CNNwww.cnn.com/2023/08/07/us/detroit-facial-recognition-technology-false-arrest-lawsuit/index.html
  3. Source 3Washington Postwww.washingtonpost.com/nation/2023/08/07/michigan-porcha-woodruff-arrest-facial-recognition/

Related incidents

Same category, country, or harm tier.

United States·July 2025
Tennessee Grandmother Angela Lipps Wrongfully Jailed by Fargo PD AI Facial Recognition
Fargo Police investigating a series of bank-fraud cases that occurred between April and May 2025, in which a suspect used a fake U.S. Army military ID to withdraw thousands of dollars, ran AI facial recognition on surveillance video. The system flagged Angela Lipps, a 50-year-old grandmother in Tennessee. A detective compared social-media and driver's-license photos and concluded she fit. U.S. Marshals arrested Lipps at gunpoint at her home in July 2025 while she was babysitting four young children.
United States·January 2020
Wrongful Arrest of Robert Williams (Detroit Facial Recognition)
Detroit Police used facial recognition on blurry 2018 surveillance footage of a watch theft, matching it against Williams's expired driver's license photo as the ninth-best candidate. Loss-prevention contractor not present at crime picked Williams from a photo lineup. He was arrested in front of wife and two daughters, detained 30 hours.
United States·2023-10-02 (incident); 2024-11-14 (settlement)
GM Cruise Robotaxi Drags Pedestrian 20 Feet
Pedestrian hit by a human-driven car was thrown into the path of a Cruise robotaxi on Market Street. The Cruise vehicle could not avoid the initial impact, but its sensors failed to detect a human was underneath. It executed a pull-over at ~7 mph, dragging the victim 20 feet to the curb. Cruise's initial NHTSA report omitted the dragging; the company did not correct the report for 10 days.
← Back to all incidentsSee full catalogue