Brickbat: Close Enough

Randal Quran Reid spent six days in an Atlanta jail after local officers picked him up on warrants for theft from Louisiana, a state he has never been to. He was not told why he'd been arrested. But a Louisiana attorney Reid's family hired found that he was accused of theft from a consignment store. When he was shown store security video of the suspect, he saw that the man looked sort of like Reid but was obviously heavier. Talking to the police, he came to believe that they had used facial recognition technology to ID Reid as the suspect, which an anonymous source close to the investigation confirmed to The New York Times. But that isn't reflected in any of the documents in the case. And no one from the Jefferson Parish sheriff's office will confirm that on the record, even though public records show the sheriff's office has a contract with a facial recognition vendor. Reid was freed and his warrant was withdrawn after his attorney gave the sheriff's office photos of him and they saw that he has a mole on his face the suspect did not have.