After his arrest, Parks didn’t tell many people, in part because of his previous track record. “When you try to do the right thing and change and do things differently and then something like this happens, people look at you like, ‘Did you really do it?’” he says.
A small group of close family and friends knew about his ordeal, and for Parks, the false accusation divided those closest to him into two groups: people who stood by him after the arrest, and family and friends who didn’t want to be around. it. Partly because of the arrest, Parks says he is no longer with his fiancée.
“Some people came back and apologized and said, ‘It looked like you, so you know I just took it for what it was,'” he says. “Sometimes things happen.”
Parks says he didn’t discuss the arrest with his 10-year-old son while he was fighting the case, but they discussed it after watching a 60 minutes segment that aired in May 2021 about the use of facial recognition in criminal investigations. His son asked why his father had been arrested, and Parks said they discussed how black men should behave differently around the police, a rite of passage for black families sometimes referred to as The Talk. It was the first time they had such a conversation.
“I said as black men there are certain things we can’t do in the presence of the police,” Parks said.
In response to the lawsuit, the mayor of Woodbridge, the director of the Woodbridge Police Department and officers involved in the case denied the allegations. An attorney for the Woodbridge County Corrections Department also denied allegations that Parks had been subjected to excessive force.
Facial recognition manufacturer Idemia did not respond to comment about the allegations of malice or shocking neglect that merit awarding damages to Parks.
The broken smartphone
Oliver, 28, says his biggest fear after his arrest would be trial and loss. He was arrested in Ferndale, Michigan, during a traffic stop in July 2019, two months after the Detroit Police Department issued a warrant for his arrest for allegedly grabbing a smartphone from a teacher who was filming a fight outside a school and putting it on the street. threw ground. Oliver was at work when the crime took place. As a result of the arrest, Oliver says, he lost his job painting auto parts and it took about a year for his life to return to normal.
“I have a son, I have my family, I have my own house, I pay all my bills, so once I was arrested and I lost my job, it was like everything fell, like everything collapsed down the drain,” says Oliver.
Oliver was identified by facial recognition software based on a screenshot the teacher from the video shared with police. The teacher initially identified a former student as a suspect, but later chose Oliver from a series of photos. But Oliver’s public defender, Patrick Nyenhuis, told Detroit’s WXYZ TV that he quickly realized when he met Oliver during a preliminary investigation that Oliver doesn’t look like the man in the video. Oliver has multiple tattoos, while the person in the video has no visible tattoos. Wayne County prosecutors eventually agreed and dropped the charges.
Nyenhuis said the detective investigating the case appeared to be taking shortcuts, including not questioning Oliver or not watching a video of the incident before his arrest.
In October 2020, Oliver sued the City of Detroit and Detective Donald Bussa in Michigan federal court for damages for emotional distress and economic loss. The lawsuit alleges that Bussa did not accurately represent the facts in the warrant, including the teacher’s initial identification of a former student, and that the detective did not contact multiple witnesses or the school where the fight took place.
