Within the title of legal justice reform, California lawmakers largely prohibited police departments from posting mug pictures of nonviolent suspects or of acquitted defendants on social media accounts, beginning this yr.
Undeterred, the Murrieta Police Division introduced plans this week to proceed sharing images of suspects on its social media accounts — with what look like Lego heads substituted for the suspects’ faces.
For example, the division shared on social media a photograph of 5 suspects in a lineup, with the yellow cylinders obscuring their identities.
“The Murrieta Police Division prides itself in its transparency with the group, but additionally honors everybody’s rights & protections as afforded by regulation; even suspects,” in line with the submit. “To be able to share what is occurring in Murrieta, we selected to cowl the faces of suspects to guard their id whereas nonetheless aligning with the brand new regulation.”
Murrieta Police Lt. Jeremy Durran confirmed by way of electronic mail that the submit was no joke.
“Within the curiosity of conserving our residents up to date on public security occasions in our group whereas, on the similar time, respecting the brand new laws, we’ve been obscuring the faces of suspects in our social media posts in varied methods,” he wrote. “We’ve been doing this for the previous couple of years, and it’s nothing new to us.”
The Legislature handed and Gov. Gavin Newsom signed Meeting Invoice 1475 in 2021 to ban native regulation enforcement from publishing a mug shot on social media platforms if the person is accused of a nonviolent crime, except it might help within the seize of the suspect; a choose orders the discharge of the photograph; or there may be an current risk to others. Earlier than the prohibition took impact, the state expanded it final yr by enacting AB 994, which requires mug pictures for a suspect — any suspect — to be faraway from social media inside 14 days except particular circumstances exist.
A minimum of some criminal-justice consultants aren’t amused by Murrieta’s tactic.
Peter Hanink, a professor of sociology and criminology at Cal Poly Pomona, questioned the necessity to publish a mug shot or a line-up photograph of somebody who’s been arrested however hasn’t been convicted and even indicted by a grand jury.
He warned that publishing such photos may injury somebody’s repute.
“Murrieta is saying that they’re publishing the images out of want for transparency, but when you have already got an outline of the crime that occurred, what’s the necessity for {a photograph} that has no related info?” he requested. “The photograph obscures the face after which it’s only a physique, so what’s the necessity for the photograph?”
To cover the individuals’s faces on this manner, Hanink mentioned, as a substitute of merely blurring out their heads or utilizing black bins, seems to be a strategy to dehumanize those that have been arrested.
“The impact is comical, that that is one thing to mock and take evenly,” he mentioned. “They might’ve simply blurred out the faces and that will’ve achieved the identical goal. To make use of these different issues, these non-human placeholders, it’s a part of an extended custom of humiliating and public shaming people who find themselves arrested.”
Hanink cited an instance of Joe Arpaio, who served as Maricopa County sheriff in Arizona for twenty-four years, requiring prisoners within the since-shuttered out of doors “Tent Metropolis” jail to put on pink underwear and sleep on pink sheets.
“He modified it to pink as a result of he thought it might emasculate them,” Hanink added.
