ASAN – The city of Austin told the city note last week that the Austin Police Administration used face recognition technology to help identify a suspect wanted with three separate alleged crimes last week in Austin.
The use of facial recognition technology must be approved by the city manager and informed it of the city council and the public in full details, According to the city’s decision. The city approved a decision days after the Austin demonstrations in 2020 against the police brutality related to the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis and Mike Ramos in Austin.
In May 2024, KXAN reported that the city opened an investigation after the Washington Post informed at least 13 cases, as the external police stations provided face recognition results for APD officers because of the city that prohibits the use of face recognition.
On April 24, the suspect committed two stricts and two militant attacks, according to the city’s memo.
The city said: “The suspect showed these crimes in preparation for the use of violence against random members.” “Accordingly, APD decided that the suspect is an imminent danger, and that facial recognition technology can reduce this threat by identifying the suspect more quickly than it was possible to use other investigation tools.”
The city said Broadnax agreed to use technology to investigate the three alleged three crimes.
Moreover, the memo said that the only images used are the images obtained from “already specific monitoring clips”.
The city said: “No other people from the same surveillance footage in the images used for facial recognition technology will be included, which eliminates the possibility that the innocent and victim images will be loaded in the program.”
The memo continued that the information obtained from the use of facial recognition technology “will be kept for a period of 10 years, in line with the period of maintaining the city to achieve a first -class felony.”
The APD robbery will use the information to help the investigation, as cases were approved by the city manager. However, if the administration is able to determine that the suspect committed “additional criminal acts currently unknown before or after the incidents that are being investigated”, the information will only be shared with the investigators appointed in these cases, the memo mentioned.