Florida Man Sues Police Over Wrongful Arrest Linked to Facial Recognition Search

A Florida man who says he was wrongly arrested after facial recognition software tied him to a child-luring investigation has sued the City of Jacksonville Beach, two law enforcement officers, and two Florida sheriffs in federal court.

In a lawsuit filed June 10 in the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Florida, Robert Dillon, a 52-year-old Fort Myers resident, claims police treated a facial recognition result as proof that he was the man seen in surveillance footage at a Jacksonville Beach McDonald’s. Dillon says he had never been to Jacksonville Beach and lived more than 300 miles from the restaurant.

Named in the complaint are the City of Jacksonville Beach, the officer who led the investigation, a Jacksonville Sheriff’s Office sergeant who allegedly handled the facial recognition search, and the sheriffs of Jacksonville and Pinellas County.

The investigation began shortly before midnight on Nov. 2, 2023, after Jacksonville Beach police responded to a report that a man had tried to lure a girl under 12 from a McDonald’s restaurant. The complaint states that surveillance footage showed a man entering the restaurant, waiting for an order, and speaking to the child before leaving.

A McDonald’s manager later told police she had seen the suspect several times before and described him as a regular customer, according to the lawsuit. Dillon says that the detail conflicted with the case against him because he lived in Fort Myers and had no connection to the Jacksonville Beach restaurant.

Police did not obtain mobile ordering records, payment information or McDonald’s account data that may have identified the person who placed the order, the complaint claims. Officers also used low-quality images taken from a computer screen showing surveillance footage, rather than high-resolution copies of the original video, the lawsuit says.

The facial recognition search allegedly made Dillon a suspect after Walters ran the images through FACES, a system operated by the Pinellas County Sheriff’s Office and used by law enforcement agencies across Florida. O’Connell’s notes stated that Walters reported the images showed a “93% match” to Dillon.

Dillon claims that the phrasing was misleading because facial recognition scores measure similarity between images, not the likelihood that a person committed a crime. Facial recognition software compares one image against a database and returns faces that the system treats as similar.

At the center of the case is how much police must do to confirm a software lead before asking a judge for an arrest warrant. Jacksonville Beach’s own policy described FACES results as investigative leads, but the filing claims officers were not given clear rules for checking those results against other evidence before seeking an arrest.

After receiving the facial recognition result, Jacksonville Beach officer Scott O’Connell called Dillon about the investigation. The complaint states that Dillon denied involvement, said he had never been to Jacksonville Beach, and told the officer he had a distinctive scar running from his hairline to his nose. Dillon also said he was willing to cooperate.

The filing claims O’Connell left Dillon’s statements out of the arrest warrant application and also omitted license plate reader results showing that two vehicles registered to Dillon were not detected anywhere in Duval County during the three days surrounding the McDonald’s incident.

Arrest warrants are usually based on information the police give to a judge. Dillon’s lawsuit claims the warrant was flawed because the judge did not receive facts that may have undercut probable cause, including his distance from Jacksonville Beach and the restaurant manager’s statement that the suspect was a regular customer. The filing argues those omissions mattered because probable cause depends on the full picture, not only the facts that support an arrest.

The photo lineup is also central to Dillon’s claim. A McDonald’s employee identified Dillon from a set of photographs, but the lawsuit says she was not an eyewitness to the interaction with the child and had been busy working during the incident. Dillon argues the lineup did not independently confirm the FACES result because his photo was placed in the lineup only after the software had selected him.

Police arrested Dillon at his Fort Myers home on Aug. 26, 2024. The complaint states that he was held overnight, posted bond by borrowing money and pledging the title to his truck, and later hired a criminal defense attorney. He pleaded not guilty on Oct. 7, and prosecutors dropped the charge on Oct. 24.

The lawsuit was filed under Section 1983, a federal law that allows people to sue over alleged constitutional violations by officials acting in their government roles. Dillon’s claim centers on the Fourth Amendment, which generally requires police to have reliable grounds before taking someone into custody.

Agency policy and training are also part of the case. Under a doctrine known as Monell liability, local governments are not automatically responsible every time an officer is accused of violating the Constitution. A person suing under the doctrine generally must point to an agency policy, a failure to train, or a repeated practice that helped cause the alleged violation.

The filing claims the law enforcement agencies failed to require safeguards such as image quality review, warnings about the technology’s limits, supervisor approval, and rules for lineups based on software matches.

Dillon seeks compensatory damages for emotional distress, reputational harm, lost income, bond costs, and criminal defense fees. He also seeks punitive damages against O’Connell and Walters, along with a declaration that his arrest and prosecution lacked probable cause. The lawsuit asks the court to require Jacksonville Beach, the Jacksonville sheriff, and the Pinellas County sheriff to adopt policies and training for facial recognition technology.