Facial recognition has many uses — you can use it to unlock your phone, to help find yourself in group photos and to board a flight. But no use of the $3.8 billion industry has concerned lawmakers and civil rights advocates more than law enforcement.

Much criticism has focused on the technical side of how facial-recognition systems work. Once trained to match faces, they compare photos captured from surveillance cameras to an existing database of arrest photos — in New Orleans’ case, provided by the state police. Many researchers have warned that facial recognition is technologically biased against Black people, because it’s largely trained on white faces; and that it’s ineffective at promoting safety, as crime rates tend to remain the same with or without the technology in place.

But the New Orleans records reveal there’s a human element as well: A system can land unfairly on the community because it’s selectively used on a particular group.

Lawmakers of both parties on Capitol Hill have attempted to pass regulations limiting how police can use facial recognition for years, but have yet to enact any laws on the subject. Some state lawmakers have also tried to limit facial recognition, but so far have only been able to pass limited rules, like those preventing its use on body cameras in California or banning its use in schools in New York. A few cities with progressive-leaning politics, such as San Francisco and Portland, have fully banned law enforcement use of the technology.

For two years, New Orleans was one of those cities: In the wake of the George Floyd protests, its city council outlawed police use of facial recognition from December 2020 to October 2022.

In the year since the ban was lifted, the NOPD has sent 19 facial recognition requests, according to the records. Those requests were for serious felony crimes, including murder and armed robbery. Two of them were canceled because the city’s police already identified the suspect before the search results came back, and another two were denied because the crimes committed were not eligible for facial recognition use.

In the 15 facial recognition requests that actually went through, records show that nine of them failed to make a match. And among the six matches, three of them turned out to be wrong.

Only one of those 15 requests was for a white suspect.

The first and only arrest based on facial-recognition technology occurred in September, 11 months after the New Orleans City Council lifted the ban.

“The data has pretty much proven that advocates were mostly correct,” said Morell, the city councilor. “It’s primarily targeted towards African Americans and it doesn’t actually lead to many, if any, arrests.”

Politically, New Orleans’ City Council is split on facial recognition, but a slim majority of its members — all Democrats — still support the technology’s use, despite the results of the past year. So do the police, Mayor LaToya Cantrell and a coalition of local businesses.