Kylese Perryman spent five days in jail and 30 days on electronic home monitoring in 2021 after Bloomington police mistook him for a robbery and carjacking suspect he did not resemble. Now, the City of Bloomington has agreed to pay Perryman monetary damages and overhaul how its officers use police alerts, closing out a years-long federal lawsuit over the mistaken identification.
The settlement, announced by the ACLU of Minnesota, resolves claims that Bloomington and Hennepin County violated Perryman's Fourth Amendment protections against false arrest and false imprisonment. As reported by KSTP-TV, the case traces back to a review of security video tied to stolen credit cards used at a Walmart, footage Bloomington police connected to a carjacking and robbery at the Mall of America. Hennepin County had already settled its own portion of Perryman's federal lawsuit for $10,000 in August 2024, leaving Bloomington as the sole remaining defendant until this latest agreement.
A Traffic Stop Over Expired Tabs Turned Into an Arrest
The chain of events started when Bloomington police issued what is known as a KOPS alert, short for Keeping Our Police Safe, after identifying Perryman as their suspect. Investigators had matched him to Walmart surveillance footage using a May 2021 booking photo, according to CBS News. Weeks later, the Minnesota State Patrol pulled Perryman over for expired license plate tabs, discovered the active alert in a state database, and turned him over to Bloomington detectives, as detailed by FOX 9 Minneapolis.
The identification itself began inside county government. An analyst with the Hennepin County Sheriff's Office Criminal Information and Analysis Unit reviewed booking photos and suggested to Bloomington detectives that Perryman resembled the man in the Walmart footage, per the same FOX 9 report. Bloomington police then arrested Perryman, and he was jailed for five days before being placed on electronic home monitoring.
Alibis and Physical Differences Went Unaddressed
Court filings cited by MPR News show Perryman had verifiable alibis for all three crimes police linked to him in September 2021. Timecards proved he was working a night shift at a Target warehouse during the carjacking, cell phone location data placed him at home asleep during the robbery, and photos showed him at a family birthday party in Andover at the time of the Walmart credit card use. The ACLU said Perryman's movements were verifiable well before charges were filed.
Physical discrepancies were also stark. Perryman had prominent tattoos on his right forearm, stood 6 feet 2 inches tall, and weighed 135 pounds, while surveillance video showed a suspect with no arm tattoos, a different hairstyle, and different proportions entirely. The ACLU said Perryman's tattoos, height and weight clearly set him apart from the actual suspect. Hennepin County prosecutors nonetheless maintained felony aggravated robbery charges against him for 52 days before dropping the case on November 16, 2021.
The Personal Toll and a Disputed Cause
Federal court filings describe the human cost of Perryman's detention. He missed his grandmother's memorial service and a friend's funeral while jailed, and while on home electronic monitoring, he was required to request formal permission just to attend the birth of his son.
A central dispute in the litigation was whether facial recognition technology caused the misidentification. Perryman's federal complaint alleged flawed biometric software led analysts to the false match, but Hennepin County Sheriff Dawanna Witt publicly stated in June 2023 that facial recognition technology was not used to identify Perryman, attributing the error instead to human review. The dossier does not resolve which account is accurate, and both versions remain part of the public record.
Bloomington Agrees to Curb How Alerts Are Used
As part of the settlement, Bloomington agreed to adopt a policy explicitly prohibiting officers from issuing KOPS alerts as arrest warrants. The city also agreed to incorporate KOPS alert guidelines from the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension's Minnesota Criminal Justice Information System operating manual into its own procedures, along with broader changes to police training and supervision.
State guidelines make clear that KOPS alerts are administrative advisories entered into Minnesota's criminal justice database to share suspect information, not judicial arrest warrants, and they do not independently establish probable cause, according to the ACLU of Minnesota. The lawsuit had alleged that Bloomington police failed to properly train and supervise officers in identifying and arresting suspects, a failure the new policy is meant to address going forward.
U.S. District Judge Donovan W. Frank had been weighing cross-motions for summary judgment in the case as of September 2025, examining whether Bloomington's practice of issuing KOPS alerts with pick-up-and-hold instructions systematically led to arrests made without probable cause. That question is now moot for Perryman's case following the settlement, though the policy changes stemming from it are meant to prevent similar arrests in the future.
