I need you to. >> The look on his face says it all. >> You got a warrant. >> For what? >> I'll tell you. >> Bo Burgess was shocked when a Valuchia sheriff's deputy placed him in handcuffs. >> So, you got some some sort of fraud warrant. >> There's a major update in a wrongful arrest case out of Florida. And it centers on how police used facial recognition technology to identify the wrong man. The case involves Bo Burgess, a Florida man who was arrested in June of 2025 on felony fraud and theft charges connected to crimes he says he did not commit. Burgess was taken into custody after law enforcement officers executed arrest warrants issued in connection with a retail fraud investigation. At the time of his arrest, Burgess insisted police had the wrong person. And now, newly released information sheds light on how he was identified in the first place. Thin blue lies, baby. >> Tonight, brand new information in a West to Investigates exclusive in the search for answers on how a Central Florida man was arrested last year for crimes he did not commit. >> We've now learned Orlando police use a type of artificial intelligence to identify him. Watch investigative reporter Justin Shecker is live outside of OPD right now. Justin, you've been asking questions about this arrest specifically for months now. And back in November, the Orlando Police Department's chief of staff denied in an email that facial recognition have been used to identify Bo Burgess as a suspect, but their own internal investigation revealed an officer relied what's known as the fac's database. >> The look on his face says it all. >> You got a warrant >> for what? >> I'll tell you. >> Bo Burgess was shocked when a Valuchia Sheriff's deputy placed him in handcuffs. So, you got some some sort of fraud warrant. >> Burgess was arrested on two warrants for fraud and theft crimes last June at Universal Orlando Resort Hotels. Now, Wes Investigates has learned his wrongful arrest was the result of an Orlando police officer's use of facial recognition. >> Like, this could happen to anybody. I mean, it could it could happen to you. >> Burgess filed citizen complaints against two officers involved in his arrest. An internal affairs investigation found one of them identified Burgess with a still image which appeared to be taken from the bodywn camera of the Cabana Bay trespass. >> Um so basically it's going to be a trespass from all Universal Studios properties. >> A hotel company employee told police the subject who racked up more than $4,400 in unpaid charges received a trespass order from an officer on June 22nd. They believe the man this video gave a fake name. What was your name? >> Brian Brian. >> We are not showing his face, but the man is clearly not Burgess. >> And in the video, he has shorts on. He has no tattoos at all on his legs, and my my legs are covered in tattoos, and you can see it plain clear. >> The OPD report says the officer ran the still image through the faces database. Florida's facial analysis, comparison, and examination system is operated by the Penllis County Sheriff's Office. It contains millions of driver's license images and jail booking photos. According to Orlando police policy, the result of a facial recognition search shall only be considered as an investigative lead and is not to be considered a positive identification of any subject or probable cause for arrest. >> This raises a critical question. If policy says facial recognition can't be used to confirm identity, and it was used anyway, how does that not end in discipline? And this isn't an isolated incident. Burgess's case is now among a growing number of wrongful arrests nationwide tied to facial recognition errors. Facial recognition systems do not determine guilt. They produce probabilities. When those probabilities are treated as facts, the margin of error lands on innocent people. Even when charges are dropped, the damage doesn't disappear. Arrest records exist. Mugsh shot spread. Time is lost. And the burden falls entirely on the person who did nothing wrong. >> So an individual could have multiple images in a database if they were arrested multiple times. Dr. Michael King is a professor at the Florida Institute of Technology in Melbourne. He worked on developing facial recognition technology during his 15 years in the federal government's intelligence community. >> So this is a form of of uh artificial intelligence in the broader sense. >> Dr. King also served as an expert witness when the ACLU brought a landmark lawsuit against the city of Detroit. >> They made a mistake. Maybe it's okay. >> For the wrongful arrest of Robert Williams in January 2020. >> It was the first one that came to light. Um that that indeed someone was arrested um when they were not involved in the crime at all on the basis of a uh a face recognition search. >> Well, Dr. King says this technology that extracts unique facial features is a vital tool for investigations. >> It is absolutely vital uh that law enforcement when using the technology uh uses it in a manner where they understand that the technology only produces a lead. It does not uh confirm identification. >> In the case against Burgess, it was a decade old booking photo that matched with the image from the body cam. Police say the hotel employee picked his picture out of this lineup of six. >> I just got a new DMV picture. They didn't they didn't even they didn't look at that. >> Burgess says police should have contacted him before his arrest, so he could have shown them his tattoos or the time cards validating he was nearly 70 mi from the hotels on the dates of the alleged offenses. >> Right when they got that facial recognition, they just said, "That's him." And like I was I've never been so stunned in my life. >> And the internal affairs investigation exonerated both of those officers of any policy violations. Fortunately for Bo Burgess, the state attorney's office dropped both of his criminal cases. And Dr. King tells me this case is now the 11th known example nationwide of facial recognition leading to a wrongful arrest. When law enforcement shortcuts verification in favor of technology, mistakes become arrests and arrests become lives disrupted. Technology didn't fail here. Policy didn't fail. People failed to slow down, verify, and treat a human being as more than a match score. Facial recognition didn't arrest Bo Burgess. A system that values speed over certainty did. And until verification matters more than convenience, stories like this won't be rare. They'll just be corrected quietly after the damage is already done. This case isn't over, especially if civil court gets involved. If you want continued updates, context, and receipts, make sure you're subscribed. Thin blue lies, baby. Hey, if you're still here, that tells me two things. One, you actually care about accountability. And two, YouTube hasn't scared you off yet. So, here's the deal. If this video brought you value, do the YouTube things. Like it, share it, subscribe. That's how this channel keeps exposing nonsense without corporate filters. And if you want to support this work directly, you can do that on Kofhei at kofhei.com/thinblies media. Grab the PDF, leave a tip, or just help keep this channel independent and uncensored. 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