Detroit Police Commissioner Willie Burton is calling on the city to ban the use of surveillance technologies, saying similar tools are being used by Israel to oppress Palestinians.
Burton says surveillance technologies such as facial recognition and ShotSpotter, which are used in Detroit, “are used by the Israeli state to wrongfully criminalize innocent Palestinians, just like here they are used to criminalize Black and Brown Americans.”
“I stand opposed to technocracism and call on the City to ban the use of these technologies, as I call on the United States government to support the Palestinian people and ban Israeli access to US surveillance systems,” Burton tells Metro Times in a statement.
Over the weekend, Burton joined thousands of others who marched in downtown to Detroit to demand a ceasefire in Gaza. Rallies were held in cities around the world, including London, Istanbul, Baghdad, Copenhagen, and even France, where such rallies are banned.
In an interview with Metro Times on Monday morning, Burton emphasized that he does not support Hamas, the Palestinian militant group that attacked Israel on Oct. 7. He says he supports the innocent Palestinian people who have come under attack because of Hamas’s actions.
“I don’t condone or support Hamas, but I do stand by the innocent men, women, and children of Palestine,” Burton says. “I stand with those who are fighting for liberation.”
In recent years, Israel has stepped up its use of facial recognition technology in the occupied West Bank to track Palestinians and restrict their passage through key checkpoints, according to a report by Amnesty International.
“In addition to the constant threat of excessive physical force and arbitrary arrest, Palestinians must now contend with the risk of being tracked by an algorithm, or barred from entering their own neighbourhoods based on information stored in discriminatory surveillance databases,” Agnès Callamard, secretary general of Amnesty International, said in a written statement in May.
In Detroit, at least three Black people, including a pregnant woman, have been wrongfully arrested because of false facial recognition matches since July 2019.
Despite mounting opposition to facial recognition technology, the Detroit Board of Police Commissioners approved a new policy governing the use of the software in September 2019. Burton, who was among three commissioners who voted against the technology, was arrested at a board meeting in July 2019 after he refused to stop criticizing commissioners for meeting behind closed doors to hash out an agreement over the use of facial recognition.
The city also has been criticized by residents and civil rights groups for increasing its use of ShotSpotter, a technology that relies on a network of sensors to detect gunshots. Opponents say the technology is unproven, invasive, and racially discriminatory.
In October 2022, the city council voted 5-4 to expand ShotSpotter.
“I stand with the Palestinian people and all Black and Brown people fighting for liberation,” Burton said in his statement. “Some of the technologies used by the Israelis to oppress Palestinian people are also being used here in Detroit to wrongfully criminalize our community.”
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