A lawsuit filed against the Reno Police Department alleges that officers have made thousands of unlawful arrests based on facial recognition matches because they have not been properly trained on how to use biometrics.
The unsettling implication is that a shocking number of American police are confused about how biometrics relate to probable cause.
A man named Jason Killinger was exiting Peppermill casino in Reno in September of 2023 when he was stopped by security, which had been alerted by a facility facial recognition system about a possible match to a banned individual. That person had been banned for falling asleep on the casino’s property.
Rookie Reno Police Officer Richard Jager was called, and as he says he has done up to hundreds of times in the past, based on Reno PD policy, arrested the individual for trespassing based on the face biometrics match.
The article in the Reno Gazette Journal suggests that the software “insisted with 100 percent certainty” that it had matched the right person.
While easily passed over, the claim sits at the crux of the case. Since facial recognition is probabilistic, rather than determinative, it is objectively untrue that any algorithm can match a person with 100 percent certainty. The entire biometrics community knows this. At least some Reno police and casino operators clearly do not.
Killinger even had multiple IDs on him, including a Nevada Real ID-compliant driver’s license with his photo on it, that showed a different name than the banned individual. He was arrested anyway.
Police in the U.S. are not liable for false arrests unless they are carried out without probably cause, which violates the Fourth Amendment to America’s Constitution. That is precisely what is alleged by Killinger’s representatives in a lawsuit filed with the U.S. District Court for Nevada.
“These documents made clear that Jager’s arrest of Mr. Killinger was unlawful and without probable cause,” the amended complaint states. “At his deposition January 22, 2026 deposition, Jager took full responsibility for the wrongful arrest of Killinger, testifying it never should have happened, such an arrest based on artificial intelligence facial recognition software required corroboration and there was none in Killinger’s case.”
Systemic failure on facial recognition
Killinger’s attorney, Terri Keyser-Cooper told the Gazette Journal that “the failure of the city to train its officers when such arrests were being made on a regular basis is outrageous.”
The failure is clearly systemic, as Jager phoned his supervisor, a Sgt. Carl DeSantis, to seek guidance on the disagreement between the casino’s facial recognition and the IDs in the suspect’s pocket.
DeSantis told Jager arrest the individual so his identity could be confirmed by matching his fingerprint biometrics with a search using the Western Identification Network (WIN) – a clear presumption of guilt. Jager responded that he suspected Killinger was involved in a conspiracy with one or more individuals with the Nevada Department of Motor Vehicles.
Killinger’s lawsuit originally also alleged excessive use of force, claiming he had to seek medical treatment for a shoulder condition related to the several hours he spent in handcuffs, and violations of his due process rights under the Fourteenth Amendment.
Court filings by city attorneys suggest the casino’s facial recognition software – the provider of which has not been publicly revealed – was considered “so reliable” that RPD officers would request Peppermill’s help identifying suspects with it.
Reno PD does not have a policy related to this regularly-used biometric technology. Jager stated in a deposition earlier this year that RPD custom and policy was to accept facial recognition matches supplied by reputable businesses as a means of identification. In other words, they were regularly using technology without even a rudimentary understanding of how it works.
Jager has since attended a training session on facial recognition and admitted he would not make the same decision in a case like Killinger’s.
District Court Judge Miranda Du ruled in late-March in favor of a motion from Killinger’s attorney to include the City of Reno in its lawsuit for its poor training practices.
Peppermill casino has already settled a lawsuit with Killinger before it went to trial.
The case is at least the twelfth false arrest based on improper use of facial recognition by American police. Most of those wrongfully arrested so far are Black, though Killinger is white.
Article Topics
biometric matching | biometrics | facial recognition | false arrest | law enforcement | police | United States