Facial recognition helped crack alleged student murder by illegal migrant – new bill could ban it: ret. cop
A former Chicago Police Department chief of detectives says that a bill introduced in the Illinois state house just one day before Sheridan Gorman was killed has the potential to be detrimental to police in the state by banning the use of any biometric identification systems.
Police arrested Jose Medina-Medina, 25, on Friday after he allegedly killed Loyola University Chicago student Gorman, who was 18, early on Thursday morning. Medina-Medina is an illegal immigrant from Venezuela who first entered the U.S. in 2023, when he was apprehended by U.S. Border Patrol and released into the U.S. under the Biden administration.
Medina-Medina allegedly shot and killed Gorman on a pier on Thursday, March 19, at around 1:06 a.m., according to an arrest report.
Democrat Illinois State Rep. Kelly Cassidy introduced a bill that would ban law enforcement from using biometric identification systems, including fingerprint-matching tools, facial recognition programs, iris scanners, as well as any other software that deals with biometric information, according to the bill's text. DNA isn't included in the biometric identifiers in Cassidy's bill.
If the bill was enacted, law enforcement agencies in the state wouldn't be able to use the Secretary of State's facial-recognition database.
Illinois House Bill 5521, known as the Illinois Biometric Surveillance Act, was introduced on Feb. 6.
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Notably, Medina-Medina was identified with the help of facial recognition. Images of the suspect were sent to a police database, and U.S. Customs and Border Protection identified the suspect as Medina. He was arrested at his apartment in Rogers Park, according to the arrest report.
Retired Chicago Police Chief of Detectives Eugene Roy told Fox News Digital that without the help of facial recognition, his identification and arrest would have "absolutely" been delayed.
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"This case was cracked in large part due to looking at the videos from the cameras in the area surrounding the murder and to run them through different systems until they found a match," Roy said.
Roy said that if passed, the bill's effects would be "crippling" for detectives.
"It's gonna be just short of crippling detective work," Roy said. "You have to be able to identify people. When you build a case, it's not just based on an identification, it's just not based on a picture, it's based on the combination of a lot of things. It's based on identification. It's based on witness accounts. It's based on physical evidence. It's like building a wall. And if you take away the bricks that are at the foundation of that wall, the wall is going to crumble."
Gorman, just 18 when she was killed, was described by loved ones as someone who radiated an "unmistakable warmth" and poured her energy into things she cared about, like her family, friends and community.
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While Gorman is from New York, close ones say she brought that same type of energy to Loyola University Chicago, where she "had begun building the next chapter of her life," according to her obituary.
Fox News Digital obtained an arrest report that shows Medina-Medina was seen unmasked while waiting for an elevator in his apartment building's lobby. An engineer for the building told detectives that he knew the suspect, noting he had a "very distinct limp and gait."
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That gait, in addition to a positive identification from facial recognition, resulted in Medina-Medina's arrest.
Medina-Medina told officials in 2023 that he was living at Leone Beach Park fieldhouse in Rogers Park in 2023, which was being used as a city-sponsored shelter for migrants. The shelter closed in 2024, according to South Side Weekly.
In an earlier statement to Fox News Digital, the Gorman family said they are disappointed with policies that allowed Medina-Medina to remain in the country.
"When systems fail—whether through release decisions, lack of coordination, or unwillingness to act—the consequences are not abstract. They are real. And in our case, they are permanent," the family wrote.
In a statement to Fox News Digital, Cassidy said that people shouldn't look at "anecdotes."
"Just as with all bills introduced in our body, HB5521 is a work in progress aimed at curtailing the abuses of biometric data we’ve most recently seen during Operation Midway Blitz. It is tragic that some people want to use individual tragedies to justify the use of flawed technologies that risk the private information of millions in our state," Cassidy said.
"Rather than look at anecdotes, we should know that facial recognition technology is demonstrably inaccurate. It is curious that in discussing this issue, we hear about particularly heinous and troubling crimes, but nothing about people being misidentified by facial recognition technology and held for hours (if not days) based on system errors. House Bill 5521 does not limit state and local police from investigating crimes. It simply protects the privacy of millions of Illinois residents simply because they have an Illinois driver’s license."