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…