Florida Man Sues Police Over Wrongful Arrest Due to False Facial Recognition Match

JACKSONVILLE, Fla. — Robert Dillon is suing the Jacksonville Beach Police Department, as well as the Jacksonville and Pinellas County Sheriff’s Offices, after he was wrongfully arrested due to a faulty facial recognition match. The police relied on an incorrect result from facial recognition technology to get an arrest warrant, while concealing evidence that showed he could not have committed the crime he was being accused of. He is one of 15 known people to have this happen to them in the United States.

“The night I spent in jail after they arrested me for a crime I did not commit still haunts me to this day. I will never get over how terrified and worried I was, wondering if I’d ever go home to my wife and daughter again,” said Robert Dillon. “Over a year later, I’m still picking up the pieces of my life, all because the police relied on this dangerous technology instead of doing their jobs and actually investigating. Florida police must implement safeguards and ensure this never happens to anyone else, because until they do, nobody is safe.”

Fifty-two-year-old Robert Dillon lives in Fort Myers, Florida with his wife and daughter. His life was irreparably changed in August 2024, when police arrested him for a crime he never committed. Mr. Dillon was accused of trying to lure a child at a fast-food restaurant in Jacksonville Beach, more than 300 miles away from his home, after a Jacksonville Sheriff’s Office employee ran grainy surveillance photos of the suspect through an AI-assisted facial recognition program, which identified Dillon as a possible match. Using only that, and the statement of a restaurant employee who picked his photo out of a lineup, Jacksonville Beach police got an arrest warrant.

As the lawsuit explains, the photo lineup was unreliable because when facial recognition technology generates a false match, it will often be to someone who looks similar to the suspect, thus misleading witnesses who are asked to choose between that innocent lookalike and a set of random filler photos. What police didn’t tell the court is that a McDonald’s employee said the suspect was a “regular” at the Jacksonville Beach restaurant, but that Mr. Dillon lived five hours away and had told police he had never even been to Jacksonville Beach in his life, and that an automatic license plate reader search showed no hits on his car anywhere near the Jacksonville Beach McDonald’s in the days surrounding the crime.

The prosecutor has since dropped the charges against Mr. Dillon, and the record of his arrest has been wiped; however, the trauma remains. He was forced to borrow money and pledge the title to his truck to post bond, he lost income while he was subjected to months of criminal prosecution, he was publicly branded with a mugshot that remains accessible online, long after the charges were dropped, and community members still approach him in public to ask about the case. No law enforcement agency has ever apologized.

“No one should lose their freedom or be scared to leave their house because an algorithm got it wrong,” said Nate Freed Wessler, deputy director of the ACLU’s Speech, Privacy, and Technology Project. “These Florida police departments owe it to Mr. Dillon to make amends and to take serious steps to make sure this doesn’t happen to anyone else. Police across the country are on notice: Unreliable face recognition technology is hurting people, and we will keep fighting to hold them accountable for these abuses.”

Mr. Dillon is suing the Jacksonville Beach Police Department, Jacksonville Sheriff’s Office, Pinellas County Sheriff’s Office, and responsible police officers for damages. He is also demanding serious policy changes be instituted immediately. The Pinellas County Sheriff’s Office operates the statewide facial recognition technology system that was used to misidentify Mr. Dillon. A second wrongful arrest by Florida police due to reliance on the Pinellas County system was reported earlier this year. And just last week, reporting revealed that the Jacksonville Sheriff’s Office wrongfully arrested a North Carolina resident after relying on an incorrect result from facial recognition technology. That man spent three months in jail, losing his job, his home, and custody of his children, before charges were dropped.

“One wrongful arrest is one too many — this should have never happened to Mr. Dillon,” said Nicholas Warren, staff attorney at the ACLU of Florida. “Florida’s growing reliance on facial recognition technology threatens us all. We must stop this dangerous pattern before it traps more innocent people. No one should have their freedom taken away because the police rely on faulty technology."

The technology frequently gets it wrong, and testing has repeatedly shown that facial recognition systems exhibit higher rates of false matches when used on people of color, women, older people, and young people. To date, police in Maryland, Michigan, Missouri, Louisiana, Nevada, New Jersey, New York, North Dakota, Florida, and Arizona are publicly known to have wrongfully arrested people due to reliance on this technology.

“Robert’s case illustrates the stakes when police deploy AI-assisted identification tools without adequate safeguards. Digital information can be a powerful tool for law enforcement, but its proliferation, supercharged by the AI boom, carries profound Fourth Amendment implications,” said Steve Silverberg, counsel at Hoguet Newman Regal & Kenney, LLP. “We are proud to stand with Robert and the ACLU in holding these agencies accountable, and in making clear that technological advancements, however enticing, do not suspend constitutional obligations.”

Mr. Dillon is represented by the American Civil Liberties Union, ACLU of Florida, and Hoguet Newman Regal & Kenney, LLP.