PAGE A4, KEIZERTIMES, JANUARY 14, 2022
Continued from page A1
“I'm trying to be accountable for some-
thing horrible that happened but then having
it like completely blown up and exacerbated
by the public and the shaming and the hate
mail. I don't think I left my house for like a
week after that,” Batsell said. “Keizer is a very,
very small town and I've lived here for a really
long time and I was just mortifi ed to even go
in public.”
“I just thought, how is it fair that some-
body's worst moment, everyone's allowed to
have this entire conversation about it. Like
this completely public stream where anyone
can say anything.”
Law enforcement use of social media
Social media gives police departments
the power to share information directly with
the public. In some cases, like emergencies,
the ability to share up-to-date information
with the public can increase the safety of the
community.
It also gives police departments, which
often have thousands of followers, the power
to share information on cases that they are
directly involved in. They often post the infor-
mation before it appears on media outlets,
allowing them to shape the narrative of what
occurred.
The Keizer Police Department posts multi-
ple times per week on its Facebook page, with
close to 12,000 followers. Most often, these
posts promote community events — such
as Coff ee with a Cop – or provide important
community information, such as road clo-
sures or alerting the community to scam calls.
Scattered between the lighthearted pho-
tos, however, are photos of crime scenes,
suspects and mugshots. These posts often
include a combination of an arrestee's name,
hometown, age, arrest charges and, in the past,
booking photos. The crimes posted range
from felonies, such as attempted murder, to
misdemeanours, like DUIIs. They usually
occur when the person is already in custody
and prior to a resolution in court.
“We're just putting the information out
there that's public information. That's all it is
and we're just using that media platform to do
so, or fl ash alerts to send out press releases,”
said Wenning. “We're not looking to create
controversy or issues between our citizens.”
Public shaming
The Salem Police Department's Facebook
page includes links to press releases but
rarely, if ever, do the Facebook posts include
the name of the arrested person. Since the
beginning of 2020, they haven’t posted a sin-
gle booking photo either.
On their posts that include links to press
releases, the Salem Police Department often
includes a disclaimer that refers users to a link
that outlines the city of Salem’s social media
policy.
The city’s policy says that it monitors
comments and reserves the right “to remove
posted comments that are inconsistent with
the Comment Policy.”
Since the start of 2020, the Keizer Police
Department has posted a total of 17 arrest
incidents on Facebook where they identifi ed
the arrestee's name. In 13 of those posts, a
booking photo was also included on the post.
Wenning said the department does not moni-
tor the comments on these posts.
In June of 2020, after a 19-year-old was
arrested for drunk driving and eluding Keizer
police, the department posted a booking
photo of the teen along with his name, age
and hometown.
Similar to Batsell, the insults began to pile
up on the post.
“Get these people in jails and prisons and
keep them there!” one person commented.
“Keep him in jail! He has proved to be a
public menace, and eluding the police makes
him look even worse!” another Facebook user
said.
As over 150 comments racked up, and the
post was shared 231 times, the teen took to
the comments to defend himself against the
attacks.
“Defi nitely a lesson learned. I defi nitely
made the mistake of not calling for a ride, but
I let the anger of the situation take control and
led me to leave (and) drive impaired,” the teen
said in a response to one comment.
“This isn’t luck, this is God giving me a
second chance to possibly make a change
and not repeat the same mistake nor allow
someone close to me to make the same grave
mistake,” he wrote in another.
Jason Thompson, a criminal defense law-
yer in Salem, said that he believes posting
this information directly to Facebook, and
including booking photos, is a way of public
shaming.
“A lot of clients I’ll have will complain,
‘Hey, they just ran a story and smeared me in
the paper and said that I was arrested for, you
know, X, Y, or Z.’ And I'm like, well, that's true.
You were arrested for X,” said Thompson.
“That doesn't mean you're guilty, but there's
nothing, there's nothing false in the story.
Now, when the police end up using the mug-
shots, it's like a public shaming thing.”
“What's the point of a police department
becoming a newspaper? I mean what's that all
about?” Thompson added.
As of Jan. 1, police departments are no lon-
ger allowed to release booking photos except
in certain circumstances where it could help
a case.
Janelle Bynum, Clackamas state repre-
sentative and a chief sponsor of the bill that
prohibits booking photos, said that she felt
the release of these booking photos often
led to doxing — a term for online harassment
through the release of personal information.
“We concluded that, as an Oregon value,
that wasn't where the state wanted to be in
terms of putting people who had only been
accused of a crime, one of their worst days,
and putting their pictures out in perpetuity,”
Bynum said in an interview. “Which could
also have an impact on people's personal
safety and could have an impact on their job
prospects.”
Even without booking photos, the online
harassment that Bynum describes still exists.
In Batsell’s case, where a booking photo
wasn’t provided, it only took a short amount
of time for commenters to identify that she
was a local business owner and post about her
arrest history.
A Sept. 22, 2021 Facebook post from the
Keizer Police Department said that a 20-year-
old male had been arrested the day before for
driving under the infl uence of intoxicants,
among other charges, after crashing into
a power pole and rolling his car into a yard.
The post included the man’s name but not his
booking photo.
Over 160 comments piled up below the
post as commenters debated if the man was
sober or not. One commenter posted a video
in the comment section of the man being
arrested, subsequently revealing the man's
face.
Controlling the narrative
Wenning and Keizer Police Chief John
Teague say the information in these posts is
already public and is often the same informa-
tion sent to media outlets.
“We arrest people and make other police
actions all the time. If they're newsworthy,
then we’ll post them to the media and they
end up getting posted to Facebook too, inci-
dentally,” Teague said.
While press releases are sent to media
outlets in conjunction with the Facebook
posts a majority of the time, this isn’t always