Dozens of Innocent Motorists Have Been Pulled Over, Detained at Gunpoint, or Jailed Due to AI License Plate Camera Error

[Nevilledog]

https://ij.org/dozens-of-innocent-motorists-have-been-pulled-over-detained-at-gunpoint-or-jailed-due-to-ai-license-plate-camera-errors/

In February of this year, a Flock camera in Sherwood, Arkansas, misread the license plate of an SUV, leading officers to detain an innocent couple at gunpoint while their six-week-old baby sat alone in a car seat in the back of the vehicle.

“Those cameras are placed everywhere, and they hit license plates,” one of the officers explained as they uncuffed the couple after realizing their error several minutes later. “I’m not gonna say they’re completely perfect, because, you know, that’s modern technology.”

As the number of automated license plate readers (ALPRs) has skyrocketed nationwide, errors like this one are becoming increasingly common. An Institute for Justice (IJ) review of media reports and court records finds there have been at least 24 such cases since 2018, with the majority of those happening since 2023.

In recent months, stories have proliferated about innocent motorists enduring the indignity of being pulled over repeatedly until police departments figure out the root cause of the ALPR errors. But those drivers have it relatively easy: in nearly two-thirds of the cases IJ analyzed, officers did not realize their error until after they had drawn and pointed their guns at innocent people.

*snip*