Commercial Crabber Robert Dillon Sues Florida Police After Faulty Facial Recognition Arrest
In an essay published online, Florida commercial crabber Robert Dillon argues that flawed artificial intelligence facial recognition software and flawed police procedures upended his life when officers arrested him for a crime he did not commit. Dillon recounts how a Fort Myers police officer arrived at his door on August 26, 2024, to arrest him for attempting to lure a child from a McDonald’s in Jacksonville Beach—a city 300 miles away that he had never visited. When the officer knocked, Dillon was wearing only flip-flops, a T-shirt and shorts, and his immediate thought went to his 12-year-old daughter whose room was nearby, wondering Can she hear this?
and Does she know what’s going on?
According to Dillon’s account in ms.now, the Jacksonville Sheriff’s Office uploaded security footage from the restaurant into an artificial intelligence facial recognition system, which produced an erroneous match. Jacksonville Beach Police then conducted a photo lineup using a McDonald’s employee who was not an eyewitness, rather than the victim. Dillon argues that the lead investigator ignored substantial evidence pointing to his innocence, including a prominent scar on his face that the suspect lacked, and the employee’s statement that the suspect was a regular customer, despite Dillon living over five hours away. Police ran his two vehicles through a database of license plate readers, which did not show his car anywhere in the county, much less near the restaurant.
Dillon states in ms.now that after being held in the ice-cold jail cell and transported in the steel police van, he secured his release by pledging the title of his truck for bond and left the police station completely traumatized, unable to stop thinking about when he would see his family again or how he would explain the arrest. He spent two months proving his innocence before the Florida state attorney’s office dropped all charges, yet his mugshot remained on a police website for nearly a year. At first, he could barely leave the house, terrified that someone would confront him for the crime or see him with his daughter and call the police, and struggled even with people who knew he was falsely accused because he could not stand them looking at him and wondering even for a second if he actually did it.
In his lawsuit filed against the city of Jacksonville Beach, the Jacksonville Sheriff’s Office, and the arresting officers, Dillon seeks financial damages alongside a court order requiring law enforcement agencies to overhaul their procedures for deploying facial recognition technology. He states that rebuilding his business is secondary to repairing the trust and credibility he lost due to the false arrest.