BECK DEFENDS CPD USE OF FACIAL RECOGNITION TOOL

Interim Chicago Police Supt. Charlie Beck on Thursday offered a vigorous defense of CPD’s use of a facial recognition tool that matches images of unknown suspects to 3 billion photos scraped from social media.

Clearview AI, the Manhattanbased firm that developed the software, has come under fire after a lawsuit was filed in federal court in Chicago this month seeking to halt the company’s data collection and after a New York Times report detailed the privacy concerns its technology has brought to the fore.

But Beck said Thursday the department needs the tool and doesn’t abuse it.

Without it, Chicago Police would “solve fewer crimes than places” that do use it, he said.

“We are trying to identify people that have committed crimes. This system is only used when there is a predicate criminal charge. When there is an unidentified individual tied to that predicate crime and we’re searching for their identity,” Beck said.

Karen Sheley, an attorney for the American Civil Liberties Union of Illinois, has argued it was an “incredible absence of judgment” for CPD to sign a contract to use the Clearview software without any public input. Sheley wants the department to “stop using it immediately.” Beck begs to differ.

He argued the privacy debate about facial recognition stems more from a “misunderstanding” about the system than any abuse of it.

“It’s never used as the sole tool for making an arrest. It’s a pointer system. It is a clue. It has to be backed up by other articles of evidence that, in and of themselves, support a prosecution,” he said.

“We don’t use it in crowd-sourcing. We don’t use it during First Amendment activities,” he added.

In a wide-ranging interview, Beck also:

♦ Blamed a historic “lack of accountability” for runaway overtime that saw the police department spend $131.2 million through Nov. 30.

Pointing to the massive reorganization announced Thursday, Beck said, “As soon as we determine exactly how many people are in each command, we will give them all an individual budget.”

♦ Acknowledged the nearly three-year wait for a new police contract has exasperated rank-and-file police officers and hurt morale as much as the merit promotion system he has already abolished.

♦ Maintained that the “culture that I come from doesn’t allow a cooling-off period before an interview” with a police officer involved in a shooting. In Los Angeles, anonymous complaints against police officers are also accepted, he said.

“Sometimes, anonymous complaints are accurate . . . . To completely remove them from the process might be ill advised.”