Porcha Woodruffwas brushing up the edges of her youngest daughter’s hair while her eldest looked for her school uniform jacket, when Detroit police officers knocked on her door one February morning and told her she was under arrest for suspected carjacking.
At first, Porcha thought her kids and fiancé, Michael, were playing a joke on her — some spin on their favorite YouTube pranksters. “Are you kidding, carjacking?” she said, opening the door wide, her white t-shirt straining over her protruding belly. “Do you see that I am eight months pregnant?”
Grabbing his phone, Michael quickly shot a video as an officer frisked the mother of his unborn son. “She’s putting handcuffs on her,” her daughter, Jamiah, then 6, exclaimed, her voice breaking.
Porcha Woodruff, around the time of her arrest.Courtesy Porcha Woodruff8BIM
Courtesy Porcha Woodruff8BIM
The very-pregnant Porcha had nothing to do with the carjacking — but awaiting arraignment at the Detroit Detention Center, the 32-year-old learned she bore some resemblances to another Black woman who allegedly had. Facial recognition technology had picked up 73 potential matches, police say, including Porcha’s booking photograph from eight years prior, which dated back to her mid-20s, when she was arrested on a charge of driving with an expired license.
Facial recognition technology pulled Porcha Woodruff’s 2015 mugshot (L) and overlooked her more recent driver’s license photograph from 2021 also on file.Courtesy of the Law Office of Ivan L. Land P.C.C
Courtesy of the Law Office of Ivan L. Land P.C.C
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Courtesy Porcha Woodruff
“This can happen to anyone of color,” Porcha tells PEOPLE. She filed a civil complaint with the Southern Division of the Eastern District of Michigan last month. “I have two Black daughters and now a Black son,” she adds. “I had to stand up: How many other cases have slipped through the cracks– with people sitting in jail for something they didn’t do?”
At a press conference in August, Detroit Police Chief James E. White promised that the department would immediately reform its use of facial recognition technology “to ensure that nothing like this happens again.”
Now, the same facial recognition image cannot be recycled for witness identification, and the officer showing the photo array will not know which photo is of the suspect.
In jail the day of her arrest, Porcha felt an anxiety attack coming on. She had taken time off nursing school after a doctor advised ample rest for her difficult pregnancy. “If I go into shock mode, I could lose my son,” she realized. She paced the cell, checking her pulse, trying to calm herself.
Porcha Woodruff.Nic Antaya/The New York Times/Redux
Nic Antaya/The New York Times/Redux
Diagnosed with gestational diabetes, she could only drink a concentrated juice during her 11-hour arrest. With no chairs available, she waited out her arrest on a hard concrete bench without back support. When she was finally released on a $100,000 bail at 7 p.m., Michael rushed her to the emergency room, where she complained of “whole belly tightening,” according to medical records noting early contractions, included in the civil complaint.
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“We can put a stop to mistakenly identifying Black people in biased situations,” Porcha says, noting that if she had not been pregnant, she might still be in jail. “My son saved me. So I’m just trying to do my job to save someone else.”
source: people.com
