Cleveland police used AI to justify a search warrant. It derailed a murder case
cleveland.com
cleveland.com
>He also did not indicate that the facial recognition report returned several photos of people other than Tolbert. The affidavit simply says the fusion center matched Tolbert to “the unidentified male suspect, based on recovered surveillance video.” The filing adds that police also conducted interviews in the case, but it does not say who was contacted or the information provided.
AI or not it seems like they got caught lying.
The State has near-limitless resources, therefore they MUST be held to the highest of standards.
I'd even be in favor of censuring/firing the investigator involved who left information out of the warrant. Future defense attorneys will be able to bring this up on every affidavit or testimony he gives and some portion of cases will fall apart as a result of this.
Local prosecutors and police do not have limitless resources… poorly used and a lot maybe, but I think people would be surprised what the constraints are.
Technically true but just a lawyer's time (for "free") is significant. Throw in other prosecutors, investigators, etc and it begins to look "limitless". And beyond that, with a gun charge, it could be escalated to the state level pretty quickly. Alternatively, if he illegally possessed it - common if there are drugs - it could qualify for Federal charges.
It's up to the prosecutor(s) to decide what the charges are and at what level, therefore they get to decide what resources to expend.
Innocent until proven guilty eh?
"we found a gun of matching caliber" = "we ran ballistics and it didn't match"
You gotta look for what they're not telling you.
Edit: I'm assuming the bullet stayed in the guy and they recovered it here.
Evidince is just like charges. They throw everything, even the most flimsy and dishonest garbage, at the wall if there's even the slightest chance of it sticking because every bit of it that the defense has to get removed costs them resources. If they're not throwing it (like when they announce manslaughter charges for something the news portrayed as murder) it's because that particular piece has less than zero chance of sticking.
> The search turned up what police say is the murder weapon in the suspect’s home
The defense attorney should be commended, and the cops need to be more careful.
It totally sucks that a murderer goes free, but the reason that we need to be careful about this stuff, is because the authorities would use the exact same methodology to grab shoplifters or dine-and-dashers, and it's highly likely that there would be false positives, there.
The thing about the police, that people don't seem to realize, is that they have the power to completely destroy your life on a whim. If a cop has a bad day, you could end up homeless and alone, in a few months; regardless of whether or not you actually get convicted. That's not even counting, if they draw their gun.
That's not hyperbole. I have actually seen it happen.
sorry, we do know a murderer went free. we just don't know if this guy was the murderer who went free, or an innocent man who's name was dragged through the mud cause a cop was lazy
The bore of a gun is changed by every projectile that goes through it.
So what I'm getting is... He was a young black man.
He also did not indicate that the facial recognition report returned several photos of people other than Tolbert. The affidavit simply says the fusion center matched Tolbert to “the unidentified male suspect, based on recovered surveillance video.”
Maybe it returned every single black male in the neighborhood and police just picked who they wanted; This is crucially relevant information. Similar problem to K-9 units, the walking search warrant who will alarm on anybody the police want them to.
I have to wonder whether the legal points would have been satisfied if they'd just taken the 'Parallel Construction' route and followed the man around until they noticed a turn signal was out, and then "recognized" him spontaneously from the video. Given that they're often permitted to do this, were they just too lazy to do it?
Seriously wounded, Story walked the last mile to his home on School Street. His father found him dead in the bathtub the next day.
The is the biggest indictment of Cleveland PD and the justice system in the entire story - you could choose to call emergency services or you could choose to risk bleeding out because of their reputation. He chose to die.
The search turned up what police say is the murder weapon in the suspect’s home.
Oh. They said that. No details provided. Oh. Well, that's all right then.
> Legg’s affidavit did not disclose that police used facial recognition as part of their identification.
> The affidavit simply says the fusion center matched Tolbert to “the unidentified male suspect, based on recovered surveillance video.”
(I had to look up what a "fusion center" is, it's a cooperation between different agencies: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fusion_center)
My understanding is that they connected the weapon to the murder and thus got the criminal. The problem, from my understanding, is that the "connection" was illegal and as a result they have to remove the evidence (the gun). Without that, they have no case.
> The search turned up what police say is the murder weapon in the suspect’s home.
You can't just pull up a weapon from the suspect home and call it a "murder weapon". They has at least to be some connection especially that everyone and his dog has a weapon in America.
So much of the time they don't need to get evidence to convince a jury, they just need to get the suspect to believe they have enough evidence to convince a jury.
This all "works" because in some large percentage of murder cases, everyone knows who did it, because the "tv show unexplained unexpected murder by someone random of someone they don't even know" is rare.
There is ample history of the police doing this. You should not trust them at face value the same way you do not trust the defendant at face value.
Yes, you can, and without any reference to evidence establishing that it is the murder weapon beyond it being described as “what police say is the murder weapon”, you should absolutely consider the probability that that is exactly what the police are doing.
As for whether he did it, and whether the gun is the murder weapon, that is still very much up for debate. They found a gun that they claim is the murder weapon. To actually know that is not easy or simple. My guess is the gun is the same caliber as the one used in the murder and the ammo still in the gun was the same brand/model as the casings or rounds recovered. So given their other evidence leading them to the house, they believe it is the murder weapon. No gunshot residue was found on the gun or clothing (which is not exculpatory, but raises more doubt).
In the end we know that the suspect.
1. Had no physical features drastically different than the murderer (walking with a limp, having an afro, being 5’ 4”, being a woman, etc)
2. Owns a 9mm handgun (standard issue police handguns are 9mm, so its not exactly uncommon)
3. Lives a block away from the murder location.
4. The murderer “stopped” in Tolbert’s apartment complex driveway before the murder.
5. “was seen running toward and away from Tolbert’s apartment immediately after the killing” which I am unsure if that just means they ran down the road and passed by the apartment as he fled.
6. No belongings were found from the victim at Tolbert’s apartment or, as far as I can find, anything else providing any other positive connections.
Article appears to say the cops started with video of both the murder and a guy at a nearby convenience store that looked like the murderer--according to humans. AI was used to narrow down a short list of people who looked like the guy in the latter video. Cops then decided if any indeed did look like him, and also lived in the right area to appear on those surveillance videos. Not sure if that should be enough, but the use of AI doesn't really seem critical.
>So what I'm getting is... He was a young black man.
Gait analysis is a thing.
>hair style, clothing
If the person had dreads and a hoodey on should they be looking for a guy with short cropped hair wearing a suit?
>Maybe it returned every single black male in the neighborhood and police just picked who they wanted; This is crucially relevant information.
>>The fusion center ran an AI-powered facial recognition search through Clearview AI and emailed its findings to Cleveland police, according to the documents. >>That AI report turned up eight photos, two of which were pictures of Tolbert. *Edit added:>>He also did not indicate that the facial recognition report returned several photos of people other than Tolbert.
Please don't tilt at windmills, the police did a bad thing by not using approved tools and methods to conduct their analysis. You don't need to turn this into something more than what it is.
>>Seriously wounded, Story walked the last mile to his home on School Street. >>His father found him dead in the bathtub the next day.
>The is the biggest indictment of Cleveland PD and the justice system in the entire story - you could choose to call emergency services or you could choose to risk bleeding out because of their reputation. He chose to die.
Or you know, the snitches get stitches culture. Or perhaps once you go into shock and loose too much blood you stop making rational decisions.
>>The search turned up what police say is the murder weapon in the suspect’s home.
>Oh. They said that. No details provided. Oh. Well, that's all right then.
What proof do you need? I understand you don't want to take them at their word but it's not like the police are going to release the full forensic analysis before there is a trial.
In 2020, the Cleveland PD was noted to have 67% of their officers as white while the makeup of the area is 50% black, however it should also be noted that 60% of their leadership; Chief and Deputy Chiefs are black
https://www.wkyc.com/article/news/local/cleveland/a-detailed...
Gait analysis is about as accurate as bite analysis, which the FBI has concluded is less accurate than just flipping a coin. And gait analysis is actually less useful than bite analysis, since a person's gait will change based on circumstances: shoes, clothing, ground, weather, etc.
If the person had dreads and a hoodey on should they be looking for a guy with short cropped hair wearing a suit?
No, the issue is that they only looked at the first guy that their limited facial match search turned up.
What proof do you need? I understand you don't want to take them at their word but it's not like the police are going to release the full forensic analysis before there is a trial.
It's actually quite common for police to release some of the basic forensic details about the crime before the trial, like whether or not the suspect's fingerprints were found on the weapon, especially in cases where the coverage centers around whether they have the right person.
Oh come on, this sounds absurd. No one is going to commit suicide because the city's EMS has a bad reputation. He was probably in shock and had just had his phone stolen so couldn't call anyone.
Perhaps there's some important principle of rights that's eluding me. But it seems like the actual murderer was seen on CCTV and found with the murder weapon, and claiming AI (used as a search tool) as an illegitimate cause for the warrant is a ploy by the defence. Doing their job, sure, but it doesn't seem like natural justice or any broader rights would be served by letting this guy off.
It would be different, the Prosecutor's Fallacy, if the AI->name link was used to justify guilt, but instead the standard of human facial recognition used for getting other warrants from CCTV can be used.
Convicting the guy is one alternative, but there's another (non-mutually exclusive) option: punish whoever conducted an illegal search. If a warrant legitimised the search, punish the judge instead. If the judge didn't know any better because he was deceived, punish whoever lied to the judge, and so on.
"Might not get a conviction" is a negligible deterrent against police overreach.
> Evidence is merely a collection of facts, how it was gathered does not alter its factual nature.
That's obviously not true. The simplest counterexample is a witness report, where the credibility attached to the facts being reported will depend directly on the credibility of the witness. "The suspect verbally admitted he committed the crime while locked up in my car" will mean a lot less coming from a cop who lied to a judge while obtaining the arrest warrant.
It’s boring to argue about the definitions of words, but you’re using English and in the countries where English is primarily spoken, testimony is considered evidence.
But it isn't just that. It's a possible perjury charge for lying to a judge. It's the strong likelihood of ending the detective's career or at least limiting it significantly. It's the political fallout from articles like this one. It's the potential civil rights lawsuit bankrupting against the department and detective. It's the personal shame and guilt that the detective feels for knowing that it's their corner-cutting that let a murder escape justice. Imagine having to face the victim's family if this guy is acquitted...
These are big deterrents.
This is another reason why police officers should be required to carry malpractice insurance, that they pay for.
A survey conducted by the Innocence Project, Innocence Project New Orleans, Resurrection After Exoneration and the Veritas Initiative looked at five diverse states over a five-year period (2004-2008) and identified 660 cases in which courts found prosecutors committed misconduct, such as tampering with key evidence, withholding evidence from the defendant or coercing a witness to give false testimony. [..] Of the 660 cases examined, only one prosecutor accused of misconduct was disciplined.
Yes, you can't use evidence that was obtained illegally to prosecute someone for a crime. Their guilt or innocence has nothing to do with it.
If illegally acquired evidence was admissible in court, the police would have every incentive to ignore people's rights on a regular basis, conducting illegal searches and seizures, breaking into homes without a warrant, etc., in order to obtain evidence. On balance, this is much worse for society than one guilty person going free.
So the warrant was granted from false pretense.
A judge probably would not rule in favor of a warrant based solely on a tool whose utility is entirely unproven and which itself warns that it should not be relied upon as evidence, while they might rule in favor of eyewitness testimony.
The main problem in this case was the fact that the police misrepresented their evidence to the judge. It is theoretically possible that a judge may have issued a warrant on the basis of the facial recognition tool, in which case the evidence from the search would not necessarily need to be thrown out. If that were the case, I'd expect the defense to appeal the validity of the warrant, in which case all the questions you're asking would come into play.
If Clearview AI is indeed functionally equivalent to some random passerby, then what value-add does it actually have over that baseline? Either it's really the same and there's no value to justify deploying it. Or there's something else at play (say, scale) that's worth examining on its merits and risks.
It seems like a catch-22 here to be in that position. They can't cite it for the warrant but if they don't they get accused of being misleading.
They apparently did have enough other evidence to satisfy the judge since they got the warrant without it.
And, is it better to let off one hundred guilty people than to convict one innocent.
The police claims it's the gun. That has not been proven, and the article doesn't present a shred of evidence.
If any bullets were found and if the gun was shown to be a ballistic "match," the article neglected to mention it.
> Perhaps there's some important principle of rights that's eluding me.
The legal principle involved is called "fruit of the poisonous tree."
Good point - maybe I read too much into "The search turned up what police say is the murder weapon".
On the principle, I'm contending the tree wasn't poisoned. However they got the guy's name, whether it came out of some high-tech black box, or a detective remembered the guy from somewhere, or they, I don't know, employed a clairvoyant and conducted a seance, once they've looked at the guy's socials and the CCTV and seen it's the same dude, there's no poison.
Hold up, he was found with a gun but it does not say it was the murder weapon. Lots of people in the U.S. own guns. To call it “the murder weapon” requires hard evidence linking it to the murder.
The problem here is the same as if the police had coached a witness to identify a pre-selected suspect. The police had already decided that Tolbert was their suspect (albeit without knowing his name) by the time they ran his image through the AI facial recognition, so they discarded all the other matches.
The court also noted that AI facial recognition is no different from an "anonymous informant," which cannot be used to establish probable cause under Ohio law because, very crucially, it can't be questioned under oath.
it doesn't seem like natural justice or any broader rights would be served by letting this guy off
This assumes that the suspect was actually the killer. We don't know if Tolbert was the killer because the police the police conducted a bare-bones sham of an investigation, and lied about how they conducted the investigation in court. They could easily be wrong about the killer's identify, which means they would not only be putting an innocent man in prison, but also that the true killer would still be free and in a position to murder more people.
>At a Jan. 9 hearing, McMonagle agreed with defense attorneys, saying the AI identification of Tolbert was akin to an anonymous informant, which is not enough to establish probable cause.
Face matching can be used but it is not admissible evidence in court, and so you can’t use it for a search warrant, you have to find other probable cause.
Perhaps the fact that they were unable to build that legitimate case means he is innocent. Or perhaps they just got too lazy with the wrong judge this time.
If they felt this guy was their suspect, there's nothing against using AI to determine that they should focus on that guy and look closer. They could instigate further, even (for example) run across someone who actually told them "yeah he said he shot a dude that day" and establish other facts and legally get a warrant.
Here the AI has primed them to falsely recognize the guy. There's no independence the way there is with parallel construction.
Parallel construction would be: you pulled Joe over for [whatever reason] and searched his car without probable cause (maybe he seemed shifty or he was being a dick) and found coke, so you subsequently went to an informant who told you that he witnessed Joe selling coke out of his car earlier on the day of the search (which would have given you probable cause to search his car if you had talked to the informant before pulling Joe over).
The basis of parallel construction is that a real investigation would have uncovered the evidence anyway. What many people don't get is that law enforcement actually has to do the legwork of a real investigation (but knowing what to look for, and where, etc.) to show that the excluded evidence should be made admissible. It's a remedy for law enforcement to cure procedural violations of due process under the Fourth Amendment.
lol, what models are you using?
> Clearview AI, a Delaware-based technology company, boasts that its facial recognition programs can be used to fight child exploitation, investigate crimes, exonerate the innocent and even identify Russian spies working in Ukraine, according to its website.
> A statement at the bottom of the facial recognition report (...), reads, in part: “These search results are not intended or permitted to be used as admissible evidence in a court of law or any court filing.”
It seems to me that Clearview AI overpromised, tried to pull a Tesla with their "this car can't legally drive itself so don't try it, wink wink" strategy, and now they have turned themselves into a liability. Usually I would be happier about news like that, but then I wonder: who are Clearview AI's customers? Which type of entity "investigates crimes" and "identifies Russian spies" in such a way that they don't need the results to be "admissible evidence in a court of law"?
"Optimal Functionality" my ass, just say you want to make money by trying to sell me stuff I don't want
Can the police launder AI results through an anonymous tip line?
"Here is a picture of a guy, do you know who he is, please don't use AI (wink wink), but if you call this number apparently we can then use whatever you tell us. Wink wink."
I am clearly not a lawyer but if anonymous tips exist in police work why can't wacky flailing AI guessing machine also exist?
[Another post clarifies it is not wrong to use AI or anonymous tips, it just can't be used to establish probable cause, so the police skipped some important steps]
So no, a tip (which is an informant) is not enough for a warrant.
If they came to the judge and said “an informant said we’ll find the gun here” and the informant was actually Clearview, thats obviously a problem.
The neighborhood it occurred in is 95% black. This isn't racial profiling.
Is the existence of such a neighborhood awful and downstream of prior generations of racial issues? Sure is.
Don't invent things out of thin air to match your priors, that doesn't help your cause at all.
In a quality police department, that would be career-ending. "AI" or not.
(Also, to be fair, it can be part of the evidence presented that the suspect was known to own a 9mm Glock, say, and that he has no reasonable explanation as to why it couldn't be located. This is usually circumstantial but that can be used to explain deficiencies in the case vs used as proof.)
"Pictures/videographic evidence doesn't lie" isn't as true now as it was 30 years ago at the amateur level. Especially with coercion and human flaws.
Ring camera feed could show your actually nice neighbor kicking your dog. Could show a lowly employee that pissed off a manager stealing the company stapler. Could show a spouse having an affair, fake messages (one of the highest incidents of murder in the US is due to this). Swatting on a new level by impersonating your voice. All of these are things a somewhat motivated highschooler can now do.
Imagine what an agency or enterprise could do? Especially if they intercepted your network activity to turn you into any level of puppy kicker you could imagine because of your politics, your position, or for testing out the success rate of such a program.
Point being, letting the guy get off, the police will just blame the lawyers and not themselves a lot of the time.
You always hear, "they got off on a technicality," which means the police were sloppy and didn't do their job the right (constitutional) way, but it infers someone did something wrong in the courtroom and not the police.
For what it’s worth, that specific scenario is admissible in the US as well under the plain view doctrine.
> In Sweden, all evidence is admissible.
In America, we have the fourth amendment, a right against unreasonable searches.
In Sweden, if I don't have a warrant or probable cause, and I search the house 'cause I feel like it, and I find drugs, can I then use the evidence of the drugs that I found in court? AFAICT, that's a closer analogue here.
Because if I can, then you effectively don't need warrants: just violate the rights of the person, do the search, and see what comes of it. If something comes out of it that makes them look guilty, book 'em! /s, a bit, but the point is that if you don't bar the fruits of illegal/unconstitutional searches, the right becomes meaningless.
> If you have a warrant for say drugs, and you accidentally find someone who is kidnapped in that house, you can still use that evidence to prosecute the kidnapper.
You can here, too (the "plain view doctrine" would apply here, I believe), if you validly have that warrant, which critically, the police here did not.
for example, if the police have a warrant for a 2000 Honda Civic with suspicion it was used in a hit and run, they come to the property and check the cars parked in the driveway, the garage door is open so they can see no cars there as well but they come into the house, go into your basement and find your grow operation, that would constitute an illegal search.
The grow operation was not in "plain sight", since it was behind a door in the basement and the scope of the warrant was for a 2000 Honda Civic, something not kept in basements.
Usually warrants tend to be overbroad, so the it would probably be written as "search property for evidence of hit and run" in which case they could gain access to the basement.
That has some examples of how other countries handle things.