| Innocent Until Your Mug Shot Is on the Internet |
| Monday, 05 June 2017 08:28 |
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Stelloh writes: "Privately run online databases like arrests.org let readers tag and comment on mug shots, while Jailbase shuffles them through a smartphone app. Some sites have been described as extortion operations, posting booking photographs online, then charging exorbitant removal fees."
Innocent Until Your Mug Shot Is on the Internet05 June 17
In Mr. Medlin’s telling, when he arrived at the Portland Terminal railroad yard, he felt something there — a person in danger. What followed, however, was not a rescue effort, but a five-hour standoff with police in which Mr. Medlin was said to plead with officers to shoot him. Later, in an interview from jail, Mr. Medlin denied much of what the police said about their confrontation, though he agreed with this detail: It ended when an officer scaled a scrap car and tasered him. His arrest no doubt would have made local news. |
n a cold, rainy morning in January of last year, Matthew Medlin hopped a refrigerated freight car in downtown Portland, Ore., and headed north. Mr. Medlin is 33 and homeless, with dagger-like stripes tattooed above his eyes and four dots below them — symbols of what he described as his belief in lycanthropy, the mythical transformation of humans into wolves. He has been a habitual methamphetamine user for years. He’s schizophrenic.