The Legal Aid Society has asked the city Department of Investigation to look into the NYPD’s use of facial technology and apparent violations of its own internal policies.

In a letter sent Monday, lawyers with Legal Aid cited reporting by THE CITY on an incident in which the NYPD circumvented its own restrictions on facial recognition searches in order to track down a pro-Palestinian protester at Columbia University.

In that incident, NYPD detectives relied on a Fire Department marshal’s access to Clearview AI to identify Zuhdi Ahmed, who was accused of hurling an object at a student and later charged with a hate crime.

Many law enforcement agencies use Clearview AI software, which matches photos uploaded to its system with billions of images in a database sourced from

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