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Sporting short-cropped hair and a neutral expression, the man in the picture stares straight ahead.
He's 25, but could pass for younger, and he is Black. The police released this picture in the hopes that someone can identify him, because the man is the prime suspect in a violent sexual assault from 2019.
Except he's not real.
That's not to say the assault didn't happen; it most certainly did. And the man who committed the assault is indeed real, and still at large, unidentified.
But the picture Edmonton Police Service released as part of a news conference Tuesday is a computer-generated image based on the profile of DNA collected from the victim — a controversial practice questioned by genetic scientists and shrouded behind the closed-source technology of a private U.S. firm.
After widespread criticism for releasing an image of a generic Black man, EPS apologized on Thursday, and removed the image from its website and social media accounts.
But questions remain about why police used Parabon's service in the first place, not only ignoring the scientific community's concerns, but...