what's the process that had him in jail for so long, and is that a process that I could exempt myself from with money for bail, access to credit, lack of priors, money for a lawyer I already know?

Usually it's waving your right to a speedy trial. Very common in a lot of cases but the reasons are usually dependent on the circumstances

The surprising/scary part here is the man jailed was driving an Alfa Romeo, so presumably he had some money for bail/lawyers, and was still jailed for a month despite no evidence.

Build a system that gives you a billion piece of data, expect it to spit out one in a billion results. And then you get idiots proclaiming the odds are one in a billion, it can't be a mistake.

Easiest $1.5 mil of their life.

Flock 'AI' BS + police negligence = easy money.

This could be abused until they get rid of these cameras.

Anyone who thought government surveillance would used as anything but a prosecutoral club is naive. The cops and prosecutors don't care if you are actually guilty of any crimes, they only care if they can profitably convict you of a crime.