A Black man who lives in North Carolina spent nearly three months in jail after Florida police, relying on faulty AI identification, arrested him for stealing a car 400 miles away. Jalil Richardson, a Charlotte resident, says he has never been to Florida and was surprised when police showed up at his home and arrested him. He spent a month in the Mecklenburg County Jail and then was extradited to Florida, where he spent 50 more days stewing in a jail in Jacksonville while his lawyer tried to prove he had been falsely identified. Richardson’s arrest came after the Jacksonville Sheriff’s Office (JSO) investigated a stolen car purchased in a Publix parking lot on April 2, 2025, WSOC TV reported. North Carolina resident Jalil Richardson (right) was arrested for car theft after he was mistaken by AI facial recognition software used by Jacksonville, Florida police as the man who had sold a car stolen in Melbourne, FL in April 2025. The suspect in that crime presented a fake Georgia ID (left) to the car buyer. (Photos: WSOC Fox 30 video screenshots) Misidentified By AI Technology According to court documents, a man in Jacksonville contacted police after he paid $30,000 for the car, tried to register it, and learned that it was stolen. The JSO recovered surveillance video from the parking lot and a copy of the fake Georgia ID the suspect had supplied to the buyer. Reality TV Couple Built Trust on National TV — Then Used It to Steal $30M From Black Families and a Judge Just Buried Them for 40 Years ‘I Know You Don’t Live Here’: White Woman Walks Up to a Black Woman at the Pool Looking for a Problem — Things Go Sideways Almost Immediately A deputy used AI tools to match Richardson to the surveillance images with 85 percent accuracy, which sufficed for an arrest warrant. The man who bought the car (via Facebook Marketplace) and his brother, who was also present for the sale, also later identified Richardson in a photo lineup, which was enough to establish probable cause, the State Attorney’s Office said. ‘I Lost Everything’ Richard alleged that racial profiling was partly responsible for his misidentification. “I want to say racial profiling. The guy said it was a guy with dreads and a big nose, and then they picked me out of a lineup of guys that look nothing like me,” he said. Richardson’s attorney showed police time sheets proving he was at work in Charlotte, 400 miles away, on the day and time when the car was sold, but police and prosecutors were not satisfied, WSOC reported. The State Attorney’s Office waited a full year after initiating the investigation to drop the charges, which included grand theft, dealing in stolen property, and possessing fictitious identification, last week. While he was incarcerated, Richardson lost his job, his home, his car, and custody of two of his 10 children, he said. “I lost everything. … It’s overwhelming and it’s devastating and it’s outrageous,” Richardson told Action News Jax.Prior to his transfer from North Carolina to the Florida jail, he said, “There was no proper investigation done to even reach out to me or to see if I was even in Florida. He just automatically put a warrant out for my arrest. … And I sat in there for over 50 days in the most worst jail ever.” “I’m not sure how I’m gonna bounce back from this one, you know. It’s a lot. I’m just taking it one day at a time and get any help and any resources that I can,” Richardson said. Sheriff’s Office Justifies Its AI-Aided Arrest The Jacksonville Sheriff’s Office defended its use of AI identification in a statement: Facial recognition software is just one tool in a large toolbox for investigators. Our detectives and officers use any and all available resources to solve cases. It is incorrect to assume that facial recognition was the deciding factor in Mr. Richardson’s arrest. Calling the arrest the result of ‘police AI misidentification’ is a catchy headline but does not provide accurate context. Facial recognition software was used to develop a possible suspect from surveillance footage. After that step, the victim chose Mr. Richardson out of a photographic lineup to include other potential suspects. At a separate time, officers showed a photographic lineup to the victim’s brother, who was there for the transaction. That witness also identified Mr. Richardson as the perpetrator.Both the victim and witness spent approximately 30 minutes with the suspect in the case.With that and other information, officers were able to obtain a warrant for Mr. Richardson’s arrest.  A judge later found that there was enough probable cause for the arrest. The State Attorney’s Office later came up with the nolle pros disposition. The similarity score is a probability rating of how similar the patterns are between the photo uploaded and the photo the system brings back. Image quality and angle of the face can alter the scores. We reject any assumption that the technology discriminates against any specific skin tones.” Facial Recognition Tech Has Trouble With Black Faces “The technology is simply too dangerous for law enforcement to be using at all,” Adam Schwartz, privacy litigation director for Electronic Frontier Foundation, a digital rights advocacy organization, told ActionNewsJax. He cited at least 14 cases nationwide where wrongful arrests have been made using faulty facial recognition, the majority of them of Black people. Among them are Trevis Williams, a 36-year-old Black man falsely arrested for flashing a woman in New York City last year, who spent two days in jail, and Porcha Woodruff, who was 32 years old and eight months pregnant in 2023 when she was falsely accused of carjacking and robbery due to a facial recognition error. People commenting about Richardson’s case online urged him to sue law enforcement agencies in North Carolina and Florida, and decried the misuse of facial recognition technology. ‘I Lost Everything’: Black Man Arrested and Jailed for Car Theft That Happened While He Was at Work 400 Miles Away in North Carolina ...read more read less