(WWJ) Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib and Detroit Police Chief James Craig continue to go back and forth on the issue of using facial recognition technology to catch criminals.
And it seemed to reach a new, racially-tinged level of disagreement Wednesday when Tlaib took a tour of the DPD Real Time Crime Center. The crime center displays real-time camera footage from sites across the city.
During a tour of the facility, Tlaib -- a vocal critic of Detroit's plan to pay $1 million for new facial recognition software at the facility -- continued to take issue with it. This time, she suggested only black people should be allowed to work as crime analysts in Detroit because, she said, "non-African Americans think African Americans all look the same."
She added that, "Analysts need to be African Americans, not people that are not."
Questioned further, Tlaib cited one study that suggested people are more likely to accurately identify a person of their own race. Anecdotally, she shared that black friends in Congress regularly get called by the wrong name by white people.
When pressed on the matter of whether white people should be allowed to work as crime analysts in non-white communities, per the Detroit News, Tlaib said only "look it up."
James Craig, who is black, says he and several workers found the comment insulting, saying competence on the job is about the person's training, not their race, adding that the software is never the sole reason for a criminal charge. Facial recognition software is used only as one part of an investigation, he said.
WWJ reached out to Tlaib's spokesman requesting clarification or further comment, but there was no immediate response. They later pointed the media to a Facebook post on Tlaib's page that said, "The whole tour of the so-called real time crime center was bizarre. They want to cover up the real story that the facial recognition system is racist." Her spokesman also pointed out a New York Times story that found facial recognition is more accurate as identifying white, male faces than any others because "A.I. software is only as smart as the data used to train it. If there are many more white men than black women in the system, it will be worse at identifying the black women."
On Facebook, Tlaib's page also said, " I am trying to protect my residents from a racist and flawed system, so asking that there is a layer of protection with diverse photo analysis is doing my job."
Tlaib's comment follows an Aug. 20 tweet from Tlaib to Detroit police where she urged them to reconsider facial recognition software 'bullsh**."
The chief defended it then, and continues to defend it as an important new crime-fighting tool in DPD's arsenal.
