Mugshots have long life on Web

Laws lag behind issues of photo accessibility, publication

Monday, December 9, 2013

The mugshot, one of modern law enforcement’s oldest staples, remains an institution in modern-day policing, like fingerprints and rap sheets.

But with most sheriff ’s offices and jails keeping digital records of every book-in, even after a person is released or even vindicated of a charge, memories of an arrest can remain in the public domain via mugshots that can be found on various Internet sites.

In the past, mugshots were mostly available only to members of law enforcement. Now, anyone with an Internet connection can find pictures of jail book-ins.

This can leave some frustrated, shamed or even angry, according to Lt. Carl Minden.

As spokesman for the Pulaski County sheriff’s office, Minden has gotten used to fielding calls ranging from confused to irate about an old mugshot showing up on the Internet or through the media.

Minden often refers them to the publication in question. As a lawman, he points out that mugshots are public record. But in a digital age, that public record has a long shelf life on the Internet.

“That’s one of the dangers of a free society and the technology that we have so far,” Minden said. “The laws haven’t caught up with [their complaints about mugshot accessibility]. There’s nothing we can do about that.”

Minden’s office, like many sheriff’s offices, keeps an online jail list where people can find the mugshot and arrest information for people currently in the lockup.

Once they’re released, Minden said, the photoc omes down and is filed in their archives.

The Pulaski County sheriff’s office has taken digital mugshots since the early 2000s and has used its current digital photo storage system since late 2009.

Sheriff ’s office officials were unable to provide an estimate of how many mugshots they have on file. But with 22,036 book-ins in 2011 and 25,395 last year, the number is well into the tens of thousands.

Sgt. Dedra Woof, a supervisor in the Pulaski County jail, said the best way to avoid having your mugshot go viral is simple: Don’t get arrested.

With poor lighting in the jail, the photos are never flattering, and despite the efforts by some to take a “glamour shot” or “look crazy” while in lockup, the mugshots can lead to frustration down the road.

“There’s several websites they can go on to find your face,” Woof said. “And that’s the price you pay. I might get caught or I might not get caught, just don’t play the game.”

Many mugshots end up circulating on the Internet through local media or through websites like justmugshots.com, or the now-defunct magazine The Slammer, which was once available online or at area gas stations and convenience stores.

Interview requests from justmugshots.com officials, as well as former management of The Slammer, were unsuccessful.

Daniel Schroeder, who once worked with the publishers of The Slammer, only to start his own mugshot newspaper, the Crime Chronicle, said that sharing mugshots may embarrass some.But he thinks the information it provides the community, as well as victims of crime, outweighed the humiliation of those featured in the Chronicle’s pages.

“When we started, people were thinking, ‘This is awful, you can’t do this, this is not OK. … Then people started to accept it as a reality. It is legal to publish this, you may not like it, but if [an arrest happens], it’s going to [be published],” Schroeder said. “I’m proud of what we did. It’s not the most highbrow of journalism. But we tried to show and handle the subject manner with some respect and dignity.”

It was a difference of news judgment that compelled Schroeder to break away from The Slammer and start up the Chronicle last fall. It stopped publication this past summer.

In May, Little Rock police arrested Millicent McClinton and charged her in the January kidnapping and carjacking of Floydell Bibbs after Bibbs came across her face on a mugshot website, mugshotsonline.com, and then called the detective in his case.

Schroeder said that there were several occasions when crime victims were able to identify their suspects simply by picking up a copy of his paper.

“On the spectrum of people who were one time [arrest] people who made a mistake and are going to be embarrassed,” Schroeder said. “There are dangerous people, arrested on an ongoing basis, and we can take serious offenders off the street and relieve some kinds of problems” by providing mugshots.

Local mugshots are also posted on arkansasonline. com, the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette’s website, as a part of the website’s “Right 2 Know” project. The feature catalogs mugshots as well as crime statistics, according to the project’s manager, Barry Arthur.

“It’s a great compliment to the crime stories we do and the crime statistics that we put together every week,” Arthur said.

“I think it all blends together to give readers a good snapshot of what it’s like in the community.”

Arthur said either he or his staff takes a call “about once a month” from someone upset that their mugshot is on the website.

Arthur said that if the caller can produce paperwork that the charges that put them in jail were dropped, the photo will come down.

Neither the Pulaski County sheriff ’s office nor the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette has run into legal complaints over mugshots.

In fact, no suit has been filed in Arkansas’ federal courts over the issue, nor has the attorney general’s office received any complaints or written any opinions.

But in other states, the issue of profiting off of other people’s mistakes has led to actions by both lawmakers and the courts.

Last year, a Toldeo, Ohio, attorney, Scott Ciolek, filed a class-action suit against several online businesses and their owners who collect mugshots and offer services for their removal, but for a fee.

Ciolek took an interest in online mugshots when a client was arrested for a crime but ultimately acquitted. Yet her mugshot remained online and was a source of ridicule against her.

Ciolek has several clients who want their mugshots wiped from the Internet, but to do so, they had to pay the companies posting them anywhere from $150 to $5,000.

“If you want to embarrass someone with information from their past, that’s not a crime, if it’s truthful,” Ciolek said. “But if you tell them, ‘Pay me $500 and it’ll go away,’ that’s extortion.”

Legislatures in Oregon, Utah and Georgia have passed laws meant to curb such practices, Ciolek said, but the problem that most public officials have is treating mugshots as anything other than a public record, even if it’s applied to gain a profit.

Since filing, Ciolek said, one of the defendants named in his suit has disappeared and another defendant has changed its policy on charging people for removal.

According to Ciolek, even Google has gotten the message, and has changed its coding so it is harder to stumble across someone’s mugshot during a cursory Internet search.

In Arkansas, Minden said, there appears to be nothing to compel a company to take down a mugshot.

“All I can do is refer [complaints] to the companies,” Minden said. “The burden is on them.”

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Arkansas, Pages 7 on 12/09/2013