Illinois Rep. Kelly Cassidy, center, and images of some of the people who have been charged with violent crimes following investigations that involved the use of facial recognition. (Facebook, Chicago Police Department)
By Tim Hecke | CWB Chicago
An Illinois state legislator wants to strip law enforcement of a tool that has helped detectives solve murders, robberies, kidnappings, and sexual assaults — including some of the most violent crimes to hit the CTA in recent years: facial recognition.
When Chicago police detectives needed to figure out who stabbed 37-year-old Dominique Pollion to death and left his body on a Blue Line train in the Loop in January, facial recognition helped them get the investigation on the right track.
By feeding high-quality CTA video images into the Illinois Secretary of State’s database of state ID and driver’s license photos, detectives narrowed their focus to possible matches, including 21-year-old Demetrius Thurman. As their investigation continued, investigators allegedly found video on Thurman’s phone that shows him committing the crime.
Powerful stuff. But if a North Side state legislator gets her way, Illinois police will soon be barred from using any facial recognition database, including the Secretary of State’s, to do their work ever again.
The bill is called the Illinois Biometric Surveillance Act, and it’s being pushed by Rep. Kelly Cassidy, who represents most of Rogers Park and Edgewater in Springfield. Cassidy’s office did not respond to an email seeking comment for this story.
Her proposed law would ban the use of facial recognition and other biometric identifiers by law enforcement statewide. No agency could use the technology or enter into an agreement with a state or federal agency to use it. The bill would still allow “fingerprinting pursuant to an arrest or conviction, or to collect forensic evidence at a crime scene.” The bill does not include the ultimate biometric, DNA, among its “biometric identifiers.”
To be clear about how the tool works: a potential facial recognition match alone is not enough to file charges. Detectives use it to help generate leads and identify potential suspects.
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