The City of Detroit is suing a McDonald's franchise owner for falsely advertising participation in Project Green Light, the Police Department's crime fighting program in which cameras live-stream to a monitoring center.

Attorneys for the City of Detroit filed a complaint in federal court Wednesday alleging that ECS Partnership LLC — the owner of several McDonald's franchises in the city — had placed signs on four of its properties indicating Project Green Light participation when the restaurants were not a part of the program.

"Defendant's use of Plaintiff's 'Project Green Light Detroit' mark is likely to cause confusion, deception and mistake by creating the false and misleading impression that Defendant's businesses are partnered with 'Project Green Light Detroit,' " says the complaint, which asks the court to block use of the signs and for statutory damages, costs and attorneys' fees.

According to the complaint, the four McDonalds in question — 9815 Grand River, 1321 W. 8 Mile, 14271 Gratiot and 10400 Gratiot — were all part of Project Green Light at one point in time. In the spring of 2018, however, they were kicked out of the program because the Detroit Police Department was unable to access their live-stream video feeds — a requirement of Project Green Light participation.

Over the course of March and April, Capt. Kari Sloan of DPD's Crime Intelligence Unit sent letters to the four McDonald's informing them that they were kicked out of the program because police couldn't connect to the cameras.

According to Sloan's letters, DPD hadn't been able to connect to 9815 Grand River since October 2016; 14271 Gratiot since February 2018; 10400 Gratiot since December 2017, and 1321 W. 8 Mile since October 2017.

"... you must immediately remove any and all Project Green Light insignia — including but not limited to, wall signs, flag signs, door decals and the steady-burn green light," Sloan's letters explained.

'Unlawful infringement'

These were followed up with a cease-and-desist letter in September claiming "unlawful infringement of service mark" and the threat of further legal action should the signs not be removed.

According to the Michigan Department of Licensing and Regulatory Affairs, ECS Partnership, the franchise owner, was organized in November 2016 — after one of the McDonald's cameras stopped connecting to DPD. The Free Press attempted to reach out to its owner, Errol Service, leaving a message with a receptionist. We have not heard back.

A 2014 lawsuit against ECS over pay issues indicated that the company, at the time, owned at least 16 McDonald's in the city. A bio of Service on the Michigan Center 4 Economic Opportunity website, states that he has owned and operated McDonald's stores since 1994.

When the Free Press visited 9815 Grand River on Thursday morning — one of the McDonald's listed in the complaint — we found a blinking green light in use and all of the traditional signage indicating participation in the program. A worker who declined to give her name said the police came into the store a couple months ago telling workers that police would be taking down the signage. But, she said, the officers never returned to do this.

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Project Green Light began in Detroit in January 2016 starting with eight gas stations that agreed to install surveillance cameras on their property that would send a direct feed to DPD's Real Time Crime Center. Additionally, as part of the program, the businesses committed to ensuring they had robust lighting and a green light outside of their vicinity to let customers know they were a part of the program.

While Green Light has come under fire by civil rights advocates — who worry about the program's use of facial recognition software, how surveillance will be conducted, and the idea of forcing businesses to pay extra for a traditional public service like policing — the program has grown rapidly over the past three years. Today, more than 400 businesses participate in the program, along with two "Green Light Corridors" and one public housing property that has signed onto the initiative and plans to be fully integrated into the program by early March.

Costs to businesses

Each of these three setups — businesses, corridors, public housing — have different agreements with the city, however, in the traditional Project Green Light arrangement (just businesses) companies agree to have "at least" four high-definition cameras indoors and outdoors with high-speed network connections that allow live-feed video streaming to the Detroit Police Department's "Real Time Crime Center." Companies, in this arrangement, pay for all the start-up costs to be part of the program — cameras, internet for real-time monitoring, a cloud service, lighting and Green Light signage. It is estimated that this costs between $4,000 and $6,000 a year.

In return, businesses are visited by a Detroit police officer at least once a week. They also have a direct line to DPD, with Green Light locations being bumped to "priority one" status when they call in a problem. Finally, there is the surveillance, which DPD touts as a crime deterrent and a resource for nabbing a suspect should a crime occur.

DPD and the City of Detroit maintain Project Green Light is successful.

"So far, Project Greenlight Detroit has been effective. Since its inception, more than 400 businesses have become Project Greenlight Detroit Partners and year-to-date (YTD), incidents of violent crime have been reduced by 23 percent at all sites and 48 percent at the original eight Project Greenlight sites compared to YTD 2015," the complaint states.

Some academics have questioned, however, the efficacy of the program.

While researchers say the statistic on the first eight Green Light locations is far too small of a sample size to draw any real conclusions, it should be noted that in 2017, DPD touted the fact the crime had dropped by 50 percent at these eight original locations. Today, they say crime has dropped by 48 percent — a slight uptick.

No study exists comparing Green Light locations to non-Green Light locations.

"Looking at crime changes within a target area really doesn’t tell you much absent a counterfactual, and what we mean by a counterfactual is the situation that closely approximates what would have happened if the program would have never gone into effect," Eric Piza, an associate professor at John Jay College of Criminal Justice, explained to the Free Press last January.

Bryce Peterson, a researcher at the Urban Institute, agreed, saying that while Project Green Light could be working, it is difficult to assess with the current data.

"Violent crimes have been declining in many cities across the country. Without rigorous evaluations that use comparison groups, it is difficult to attribute the decline in any city to a specific program or policy,” Peterson told the Free Press last spring.

Peterson was advising Milwaukee police on surveillance options a the time. He said in 2017 he looked into Project Green Light as a possible option for his client. While he had heard many positive reviews of the program, his team "hit a wall" when it came time to look at the data.

Allie Gross is a business reporter with a focus on development, housing affordability and income inequality. Contact Allie Gross at AEGross@freepress.com. Connect with her on Twitter @Allie_Elisabeth.