Florida Police Department Used Black Mug Shots For Target Practice

[Newell Steamer]

Racists? No.

Amateurs? Yes. I mean, NONE of those mug shots even seem to belong in either Gangs A, B or C!!

 

[werepossum]

No, it doesn't argue against it. When showing a printed line up, they have the suspect they expect and other random, similar in profile criminals. It doesn't matter from what era their mugshot is, so long as it is of the same picture quality as the rest. That is the entire point of it: to identify a SINGLE suspect. Not a lineup for a bunch of idiots suspected of the crime.

Those two things - keeping mugshots for fifteen years to use in mug books, and using mugshots as targets to recycle - do not seem to me to go well together. Laminated, such mug shots would last eternally. If they are printed out individually each time someone needs to go through books of suspects - well, deciding what to do with the copies afterward is solving the wrong problem. It's like planting a tree to replace the one I cut down to make a single toothpick.