Facial recognition technology has been hailed as a “game changer” for police in its ability to identify crime suspects. The Milwaukee Police Department, like departments around the country, is considering using it.
But Nadiyah Johnson, CEO and Founder of the Milwaukee software company Jet Constellations and its social impact arm, the Milky Way Tech Hub, has serious concerns.
She told WPR’s “Wisconsin Today” that these technologies have high rates of false positives for populations that are underrepresented in the software’s databases, like young people, women and people of color.
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“The issue is not about functionality as much as the bias risks, due process and public trust,” Johnson said. “With technologies like this, it erodes public trust.”
She also raised concerns about potential misuse by law enforcement agencies and a need for transparency and guardrails around how officers use it.
Johnson was one of more than two dozen Milwaukee community members who spoke out about the use of the technology at the city’s Fire and Police Commission meeting on Feb. 5.
Milwaukee police Chief of Staff Heather Hough told committee members that the department has been using facial recognition technology in a limited capacity dating back to before Police Chief Jeffrey Norman took over in 2021.
Norman said at the meeting that the technology has only been used as an investigative tool to develop leads for violent felonies, not as the sole basis to make arrests.
Following the public outcry, he issued a moratorium on his department’s use of the technology until it sets a formal policy.
Norman declined WPR’s request for an interview.
“Despite our belief that this is useful technology to assist in generating leads for apprehending violent criminals, we recognize that the public trust is far more valuable,” a department spokesperson said in a statement. “MPD will continue to work with the FPC, the council, the mayor and the community to craft a formal policy but will not utilize facial recognition until that process is complete.”
The Milwaukee Police Association, which is the labor union representing Milwaukee police officers, said in a statement it is “deeply concerned and disappointed” by the chief’s decision to pause the use of facial recognition technology.
“The MPA fully supports thoughtful policy development, transparency, and community input regarding policing practices and emerging technology,” the statement read. “However, removing critical tools altogether — rather than implementing responsible oversight and safeguards — unnecessarily limits law enforcement’s ability to keep the community safe.”
The Milwaukee Police Department isn’t alone in eying the new technology. The Milwaukee County Sheriff’s Office revealed at a community advisory board meeting on Feb. 16 that it signed an intent to enter into a contract with the company Biometrica for facial recognition software, but no formal deal is in place yet.
University of Wisconsin-Platteville criminal justice professor Patrick Solar is a former Illinois police chief who spent nearly 30 years in law enforcement.
He told “Wisconsin Today” that police department leaders need to balance the benefits for public safety with an individual’s rights to liberty and privacy.
“We’re talking about the safety of all of the citizens in the Milwaukee area, versus the issue with how this software might be misused,” Solar said. “We can adopt policies, procedures and guidelines to dramatically limit the chance of the software being misused.”
He thinks the Milwaukee Police Department should craft its standard operating procedures for the technology and let the public review and comment on them again before they go into practice.
He noted that other police agencies are developing similar policies that Milwaukee and other Wisconsin police departments can adapt for themselves.
Rise of facial recognition technology
Facial recognition technology is becoming more ubiquitous in policing across the country, according to Milwaukee School of Engineering computer science professor and program director Derek Riley.
He told “Wisconsin Today” that there is a large market for the technology, with companies designing and marketing software specifically for police use.
“For a larger police department or law enforcement force, if I heard they weren’t using it, I would be surprised,” Riley said. “When I read about the Milwaukee Police Department, I was a little surprised that this was just coming out. This seemed like something that police departments have been using for quite a while now.”
Over time, facial recognition software has gotten more effective as it trains on larger and larger databases of faces to learn patterns and make better predictions, Riley said.
Where biases and false positives start to come up is when the technology goes into the real world and encounters a wider variety of variables than it had in its training database.
“Under perfect conditions, these things operate in this way, but you put them out in the wild, and they can operate differently,” Riley said. “The risk here is that you trust it in the wild in these uncontrolled conditions the same way that you trust it under controlled conditions. It’s a fallacy that they’ll operate the same in both situations.”
He noted that in many public spaces, people are often unknowingly exposed to cameras that may collect their facial data, from video doorbells to cell phones.
He doesn’t think the average person should be worried about their face images being used for nefarious purposes, but the prevalence of this technology highlights a need to be intentional and transparent about regulating it.
“You just have to go into this expecting your face and images are going to be out there. The good news is, you’re just like everybody else,” Riley said. “It opens up all these questionable privacy things where we all have pause. I think that’s where, as a society, we’re still wrestling with this, and I think that’s OK. We just have to do it in the open as much as possible.”
