Detroit police Chief James Craig, said comments Rep. Rashida Tlaib made about how the department should only employ African Americans to work with facial recognition software were “racist.”
The Michigan Democrat made the remarks Monday during a tour of the Detroit Police Department’s Real Time Crime Center, where she learned about how the city uses facial recognition technology.
“Analysts need to be African Americans, not people that are not,” she told Craig, who is black. “I think non-African Americans think African Americans all look the same.”
Craig pushed back, saying he trusts “people who are trained, regardless of race, regardless of gender. It’s about the training.”
Craig said several of his staff, including both those who are white and black, told him after the tour they found Tlaib’s comments to be offensive.
“It’s insulting,” Craig said, according to The Detroit News. “We have a diverse group of crime analysts, and what she said — that non-whites should not work in that capacity because they think all black people look alike — is a slap in the face to all the men and women in the crime center.”
“That’s something we train for, and it’s valuable training, but to say people should be barred from working somewhere because of their skin color? That’s racist,” he said.
The police chief reiterated his feelings in an interview with Fox2 News.
“I think they are racist, I don’t know [if] we can call it what we want,” Craig said Wednesday.
