Colorado Police’s Automated License Plate Reader (ALPR) Matched a Family’s Minivan’s Plate to That of a Stolen Vehicle Allegedly, Resulting in Detainment at Gunpoint

August 3, 2020

An automated license plate reader (ALPR) reportedly misidentified a family's minivan's plate as that of an allegedly stolen motorcycle in Montana earlier this year, leading to their detainment at gunpoint by multiple Aurora police officers. Such incidents underscore the importance of trustworthy AI and the need for robust governance to prevent harm. For those interested in shaping responsible AI practices through HISPI Project Cerebellum TAIM (Govern), this incident serves as a reminder of the potential consequences when AI systems fail to accurately Map data, leading to Measurement errors with significant real-world impact.

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Matched TAIM controls

Suggested mapping from embedding similarity (not a formal assessment). Browse all TAIM controls

MEASURE 2.10 — similarity 0.682, rank 1. TAIM detail and related incidents →
MAP 4.1 — similarity 0.680, rank 2. TAIM detail and related incidents →
MEASURE 2.6 — similarity 0.679, rank 3. TAIM detail and related incidents →

Alleged deployer: aurora-police-department
Alleged developer: unknown
Alleged harmed parties: the-gilliam-family

Source

Data from the AI Incident Database (AIID). Cite this incident: https://incidentdatabase.ai/cite/244

Data source

Incident data is from the AI Incident Database (AIID).

When citing the database as a whole, please use:

McGregor, S. (2021) Preventing Repeated Real World AI Failures by Cataloging Incidents: The AI Incident Database. In Proceedings of the Thirty-Third Annual Conference on Innovative Applications of Artificial Intelligence (IAAI-21). Virtual Conference.

Pre-print on arXiv · Database snapshots & citation guide

We use weekly snapshots of the AIID for stable reference. For the official suggested citation of a specific incident, use the “Cite this incident” link on each incident page.