Milwaukee's police department banned facial recognition technology in February, but that ban came too late for cases already built with its help. Right now, Milwaukee County prosecutors can still use leads generated by facial recognition — a technology the department admittedly used for years without a formal written policy — even though that policy still doesn't exist.

This isn't a small technicality. Facial recognition systems have a well-documented pattern of higher false-positive rates for Black, Asian, and American Indian people. "The reliability of these systems is certainly in question, and particularly the disproportionate risk of inaccuracy when identifying non-white faces," according to Amanda Merkwae, policy and advocacy director for the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of Wisconsin.

It gets worse: nobody can say how often this technology was even disclosed. When the ACLU of Wisconsin reviewed police reports the department itself flagged as facial recognition cases, many "just no mention of (facial recognition technology) use at all," Merkwae said. If police aren't consistently writing it down, how can defendants and their attorneys know to challenge it?

Milwaukee's Fire and Police Commission and the District Attorney's office both have the power to close this gap right now, before the promised written policy is finished — not after. Until there are enforceable rules and full disclosure requirements, no case should move forward on a lead this technology helped create.

A ban on paper means nothing if the cases it already touched keep moving through the system unchecked. Sign the petition to stop facial-recognition-derived leads from powering Milwaukee prosecutions until real safeguards are in place.