New Jersey: A black man who was wrongly identified by a police computer in the US state of New Jersey has filed a defamation and damages lawsuit against the local police.
According to the details, the 33-year-old named Najir Parks received a notice of immediate attendance from the Woodridge Town Police Station in January 2019.
When he arrived at the police station to find out the reason for the notice, he was arrested without question because the police used face recognition software “Clear View” to identify him as a criminal who committed robbery. And he was wanted by police for a number of crimes, including attempted murder.
This was a surprise to Parks because he had never been to Woodridge Town before.
Although there were already complaints of misidentification of people against the software, the police relied so heavily on their computers that they did not listen to one of the parks.
Parks had to spend ten days in jail for a computer error while facing a rigorous investigation by the police department.
He was finally released on bail ten days later, but continued to fight for his innocence for a year.
Even in January 2020, New Jersey State Attorney General Gerber Grewal took note of the growing number of complaints against “Clear View” and ordered the local police to stop using the software immediately.
The lawsuit against Parks was dropped, but he has now retaliated by filing a lawsuit against the police, including the Woodridge police director and mayor, as well as the Middlesex County Prosecutor’s Office and the county jail.
In the lawsuit, Parks argued that he had been convicted of software misconduct and had been jailed for ten days without charge.
Police had no evidence against Parks: he had never been to the Woodridge area, and no DNA or fingerprints had been found at the scene.
Despite this, Woodridge police took all the action against Parks after he was found guilty of using only one controversial software.
Reiterating all of this in the lawsuit, Parks argued that all of his savings had been spent on acquittal, while suffering from mental anguish and financial hardship separately.
Parks says New Jersey government agencies are responsible for all of these problems, so they should not only apologize but also pay a reasonable amount of money as compensation.