Latest news with #NewOrleansPolice
Washington Post
a day ago
- Washington Post
New Orleans pushes to legalize police use of ‘facial surveillance'
New Orleans is considering easing restrictions on the police use of facial recognition, weeks after The Washington Post reported that police there secretly relied on a network of AI-powered surveillance cameras to identify suspects on the street and arrest them. According to the draft of a proposed ordinance posted to a city website, police would be permitted to use automated facial recognition tools to identify and track the movements of wanted subjects, missing people or suspected perpetrators of serious crimes — reversing the city's broad prohibition against using facial recognition as a 'surveillance tool.' The proposed rule, which was written by a New Orleans police official, is scheduled for a city council vote later this month, according to a person briefed on the council's plans who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the person was not authorized to speak about them publicly. If the rule passes, New Orleans would become the first U.S. city to formally allow facial recognition as a tool for surveilling residents in real time. In an emailed statement, a police spokesperson said the department 'does not surveil the public,' and that surveillance is 'not the goal of this ordinance revision.' But the word 'surveillance' appears in the proposed ordinance dozens of times, including explicitly giving police authority to use 'facial surveillance.' Many police departments use AI to help them identify suspects from still images taken at or near the scene of a crime, but New Orleans police have already taken the technology a step further. Over the past two years, the department relied on a privately owned network of cameras equipped with facial recognition software to constantly monitor the streets for wanted people and automatically ping an app on officers' mobile phones to convey the names and locations of possible matches, The Post reported last month. In April, after The Post requested public records about this system, New Orleans Police Superintendent Anne Kirkpatrick paused the automated alerts and ordered a review into how officers used the technology and whether the practice violated local restrictions on facial recognition. David Barnes, a New Orleans police sergeant overseeing legal research and planning, who wrote the proposed ordinance, said he hopes to complete the review and share his findings before the city council vote. The facial recognition alerts are still paused, he said Wednesday. There are no federal regulations around the use of AI by local law enforcement. New Orleans was one of many cities to ban the technology during the policing overhauls passed in the wake of the Black Lives Matter protests of 2020, with the city council saying it had 'significant concerns about the role of facial recognition technologies and surveillance databases in exacerbating racial and other bias.' Federal studies have shown the technology to be less reliable when scanning people of color, women and older people. New Orleans partly rolled back the restrictions in 2022, letting police use facial recognition for searches of specific suspects of violent crimes, but not for general tracking of people in public places. Each time police want to scan a face, they must send a still image to trained examiners at a state facility and later provide details about these scans to the city council — guardrails meant to protect the public's privacy and prevent software errors from leading to wrongful arrests. Now, city leaders want to give police broad access to the technology with fewer limitations, arguing that automated surveillance tools are necessary for fighting crime. Violent crime rates in New Orleans, like much of the country, are at historic lows, according to Jeff Asher, a consultant who tracks crime statistics in the region. But facial recognition-equipped cameras have proven useful in a few recent high-profile incidents, including the May 16 escape of 10 inmates from a local jail and the New Year's Day attack on Bourbon Street that left 14 dead. 'Violent crime is at an all-time low but mass murders and shootings are at an all-time high,' Oliver Thomas, one of two council members sponsoring the ordinance, said in an interview this week. 'This is a tool to deal with some of this mass violence and mass murders and attacks.' After The Post informed Thomas there were just over 300 fatal and nonfatal shootings in New Orleans last year — by far the lowest number in the 14 years the city council has published these statistics on its online crime data dashboard — he acknowledged that shootings are down and partly attributed the decline to his work with young people and ex-offenders. Nora Ahmed, the legal director for the ACLU of Louisiana, said council members are using public concern over recent news to justify the widespread adoption of facial recognition technology, or FRT — a powerful technology with the potential to strip people of their rights. 'In the name of making FRT available for a once-in-a-decade jail break, this bill opens up FRT to being used by federal and state entities, and enterprising local police departments,' Ahmed said in a text message. 'This type of surveillance should not exist in the United States period.' The new ordinance would give police the ability to use 'facial surveillance' and 'characteristic tracking' systems to actively monitor the streets looking for people with warrants or people under investigation. It would require them to continue sharing data about facial searches to the city council and begin reporting details about the software they use and its accuracy. While the ordinance says police cannot use facial surveillance tools to target abortion seekers or undocumented immigrants, Ahmed says those protections are 'paper thin' and worries officers would find ways around them. It's not clear whether New Orleans plans to keep working with Project NOLA, a privately funded nonprofit group that has provided automated facial recognition alerts to officers despite having no contract with the city. Barnes, the police sergeant, said Project NOLA would need to come into a formal data-sharing agreement with the city if it wanted to continue sending automated alerts to officers who have logged into a Project NOLA system to receive them. Under the new ordinance, Project NOLA could also be required to publish information about all of its searches to the city council. Such data reporting could be complicated with a live facial recognition system, in which cameras are constantly scanning every face in their vicinity. With hundreds of cameras potentially scanning thousands of faces a day, Project NOLA or the city could theoretically need to report information about millions of facial recognition scans in each of its quarterly data reports the department is required to provide city council. Bryan Lagarde, Project NOLA's founder, declined to comment this week, saying he was on vacation. New Orleans's embrace of the term 'surveillance' — which appears 40 times in the text of the proposed ordinance — appears at odds with statements made by Kirkpatrick, the city's top police official. In an interview last month, Kirkpatrick said she believes governments should be prevented from surveilling their citizens, especially when they are in public exercising their constitutional rights. 'I do not believe in surveilling the citizenry and residents of our country,' Kirkpatrick said at the time. 'Surveilling is an invasion of our privacy.'
Washington Post
4 days ago
- Washington Post
Fugitive's girlfriend charged with aiding breakout at New Orleans jail where she once worked
NEW ORLEANS — Authorities arrested a former New Orleans jail employee on Monday and accused her of aiding in the 10-inmate breakout at the facility last month, which included an escape by her boyfriend — a convicted murderer. The former jail employee, Darriana Burton, 28, is one of at least 16 people arrested and accused of aiding the escape of the inmates on May 16. Authorities said only two remain at large: her boyfriend, Derrick Groves, and Antoine Massey, who is facing charges of rape, kidnapping and domestic battery.
Washington Post
19-05-2025
- Washington Post
Police secretly monitored New Orleans with facial recognition cameras
NEW ORLEANS — For two years, New Orleans police secretly relied on facial recognition technology to scan city streets in search of suspects, a surveillance method without a known precedent in any major American city that may violate municipal guardrails around use of the technology, an investigation by The Washington Post has found.
CNA
18-05-2025
- CNA
Ten inmates, including accused murderers, escape New Orleans jail with 'inside' help
Ten inmates, including some charged with murder, escaped from a New Orleans jail with inside help on Friday (May 16), and a manhunt was underway, authorities said. The Orleans Parish Justice Center, which mostly holds people awaiting trial or sentencing, discovered the inmates aged 19 to 42 were gone during a routine head count on Friday morning, officials said. The escapees broke out around 1am. They first pulled a sliding cell door off its tracks then breached a wall by ripping away a toilet and sink, Orleans Parish Sheriff Susan Hutson said at an afternoon press conference. Security video captured the men fleeing via a loading dock, scaling a wall and running across a nearby highway, she said. Two of the inmates were captured on Friday, but the remaining eight were still on the run. "We have indication that these detainees received assistance in their escape from individuals inside of our department," Hutson said. A jail employee monitoring surveillance video saw the escape but did not alert deputies, she said. She did not detail the assistance the inmates received. Hutson urged the public to stay alert and said various law enforcement agencies were working on the manhunt. Louisiana State Police said in a statement that one recovered escapee was found hiding under a car in a hotel garage in New Orleans' famed French Quarter. New Orleans Police Superintendent Anne Kirkpatrick said at a news conference that her department was notified about the jail break about two hours after the inmates were discovered missing, and that some were facing murder charges. Kirkpatrick said it was concerning that her department was not notified sooner.
CBS News
16-05-2025
- CBS News
Manhunt continues for 9 inmates who escaped New Orleans jail
Ten inmates considered "armed and dangerous" escaped a New Orleans jail Friday morning, and it's believed they had inside help, the Orleans Parish Sheriff's Office said. One inmate has been captured, and nine remain at large. Earlier, the sheriff's office had said 11 inmates had escaped the jail but updated the count later on Friday. Keith Lewis was incorrectly identified as an escapee, Sheriff Susan Huston said during a news conference. "There's no way for anyone to get out of this facility without help from the outside," Hutson said. The inmates were discovered missing during a routine head count conducted at 8:30 a.m. at the Orleans Parish Jail, according to the sheriff's office. They are believed to have escaped sometime just after midnight. The sheriff said that around 12:23 a.m., the inmates yanked the sliding jail cell door off the track and at 1:01 a.m., they exited the jail after breaching a wall behind the toilet. The toilet and bolts were removed using toiletry items, the sheriff said, but didn't specify what the items were. They then scaled down a wall and ran across the interstate. Sheriff Hutson said it's believed the escapees received help from jail staff or deputies. New Orleans Police Superintendent Anne Kirkpatrick said one inmate has since been apprehended in downtown New Orleans through facial recognition, caught by a surveillance camera. Louisiana State Police identified the escapee as Kendell Myles and said Myles tried to flee on foot before being apprehended "without further incident." The sheriff's office said deputies found Myles hiding beneath a car at the Hotel Monteleone parking garage. He was returned to the Orleans Parish jail and is being rebooked with a new charge of simple escape, the sheriff said. The rest of the escapees are believed to be in New Orleans, police said. The Orleans Parish Jail was on lockdown. A jail cell at the Orleans Parish Jail. The sheriff's office said 10 inmates escaped from the facility. One inmate was captured shortly afterward, multiple law enforcement agents launched a manhunt to locate the others. photos courtesy Orleans Parish Sheriff's Office "A search for the individuals is currently underway, OPSO is working with local and state law enforcement agencies on the search to return them to custody," the Orleans Parish Sheriff's Office said in a statement. Kirkpatrick said during a news conference that the New Orleans police, including their violent offender warrant squad; the FBI and the U.S. Marshals joined the hunt to find the escaped inmates — all violent offenders being held on the same jail tier. The Louisiana State Police were also searching. Police were still waiting midday Friday for a complete set of photos of the escaped inmates, Kirkpatrick said. She said they notified some victims of the escapees, several of whom are facing murder charges or other violent charges. Police removed a family from their homes and took them to safety in the wake of the jailbreak, Kirkpatrick said. A jail cell in Orleans Parish from which 10 "armed and dangerous" inmates escaped. photos courtesy Orleans Parish Sheriff's Office She asked the public to notify police if they were victims or witnesses at the escapees' trials so they could get help. She said the escapees probably had help, and it was unlikely they were still in their jumpsuits. Kirpatrick warned the public that if they harbor or help these escapees, "they will be charged."
