For months, hundreds of booking photos from the Lakewood Police Department website were being posted on an anonymous Facebook page where commenters ridiculed people who entered the city jail.
A jail official said police had no idea that the full-body images were being mistakenly fed to a city website, allowing someone to post the photos daily to a Facebook page called Cuyahoga County Mugshots OH. The public page, which uses a sheriff’s vehicle as its profile picture and the jail’s address, features mostly photos from Lakewood.
Police officials ended the practice after The Marshall Project – Cleveland asked why the department doesn’t take more traditional headshots, which typically only show an individual’s face. Some of the full-body images posted showed officers smiling next to the people, who in some cases were handcuffed behind their backs or wearing nothing but underwear. Other photos depicted people in spit hoods, obscuring their faces entirely. The photos attracted racist and body-shaming Facebook comments, while others pleaded with the page’s moderators to take their photos down.
Lakewood Police Capt. Gary Stone, the jail administrator, said the camera is set to photograph people showing as much of their body as possible. This aids jail staff in identifying incarcerated persons and fully documents their condition upon entry, he added. Stone stressed that the department also takes headshots of people like traditional booking images.
“We have chosen to change the default setting so that [full-body] intake photos are not automatically posted,” Stone wrote in a statement. “They remain a public record, so if they are requested, they will be released to the inquiring party.”
A message seeking comment from the administrator of the Facebook page was not immediately returned.
This article was first published by The Marshall Project, a nonprofit news organization covering the U.S. criminal justice system. Sign up for their newsletters, and follow them on Instagram, TikTok, Reddit and Facebook..