By Harold Hutchison
An Illinois state legislator has introduced legislation to prohibit police from using facial recognition technology to solve crimes, a Chicago-area media outlet reported.
Chicago police used facial recognition software to generate leads that helped to solve multiple homicides, CWBChicago.com reported Sunday. Democratic Illinois State Rep. Kelly Cassidy introduced HB5521, the Illinois Biometric Surveillance Act, on Feb. 6 to halt the use of the software. (RELATED: City Official Says Murder Victim May Have ‘Startled’ Illegal Alien Who Shot Her)
“A law enforcement agency may not obtain, retain, possess, access, request, use or enter into an agreement with a third party, State or local government agency, or federal agency to obtain, retain, possess, access, request, or use a biometric identification system or information derived from a biometric identification system,” the text of the legislation introduced by Cassidy reads.
“We lock up too many people, keep them for too long, and make it too difficult for them to reintegrate back into society when their release finally comes,” Cassidy said on her website. “Rather than act as a deterrent to recidivism, these punitive measures ensure that youthful mistakes become a lifetime of difficulty getting jobs and finding housing. Often, people in that desperate situation feel they have no choice but to turn back to crime.”
Cassidy’s official biography on the Illinois state Legislature’s site touts her as the “only openly gay female legislator serving in the General Assembly.” The lawmaker is married to former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich’s half-sister Candace.
Police used surveillance footage to locate Jose Medina-Medina, an illegal alien from Venezuela who was arrested Sunday for the murder of Sheridan Gorman, a freshman at Loyola University
In one case, the software helped close a case centered around the killing of 44-year-old Raymond Harrison. Detectives used facial recognition technology to identify Pedro Villareal as a possible suspect in the homicide, and a surviving victim picked Villareal out of a photo lineup.
Villareal is awaiting trial for the killing. Chicago led the country in murders for the 13th straight year, totaling 572 in 2024, according to a 2025 CWBChicago.com.
Democratic Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson halted use of a technology to detect gunshots in Sept. 2024, according to CWBChicago.com. The crime rate in the city has led to multiple companies leaving the city, with Boeing, Caterpillar and Tyson Foods being among the most prominent.
Johnson has claimed that incarcerating criminals to reduce crime is “racist” and “immoral”, which may help explain why Chicago is so bad at putting criminals in jail. Chicago arrests the perpetrator in only 13% of all crimes, leaving many criminals free to attack more innocent people.
Failing to incarcerate criminals can lead to a high crime rate. When Italy released inmates early, that increased its crime rate significantly, according to a 2014 study. (See Alessandro Barbarino & Giovanni Mastrobuono, the Incapacitation Effect of Incarceration from Several Italian Collective Pardons, American Economic Journal, Vol. 6, No. 1, pp. 1-37 (2014)). Other studies find similar results.
Yet Mayor Johnson said, “We cannot incarcerate our way out of violence….The addiction on jails and incarceration in this country, we have moved past that. It is racist. It is immoral. It is unholy. And it is not the way to drive violence down.”
