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Photoshop is one of the most important technological tools within the creative industry and beyond. But as a recent court case in Oregon has highlighted, its potential for abuse within law enforcement is rife.
Photo manipulation is almost as old as photography itself. But in the 21st century, the ability to take photos and edit them has never been easier. On the surface, this can seem harmless. If someone wants to appear more attractive on Instagram, then that’s hardly going to be consequential in the long run.
But the story of Tyrone Lamont Allen shows how law enforcement’s abuse of Photoshop and photo manipulation software has the potential to lead to dire consequences. It also shows how image manipulation can fall under the radar, as it almost did in his instance.
It began in April 2017, when an individual robbed a series of banks. The Portland Police Bureau, which was overseeing the case, believed that Allen was a suspect. But there was a major flaw. No witness stated that the robber had had any facial tattoos, but Allen had many distinctive facial tattoos. Their solution was to alter their mugshot of Allen by removing his tattoos. They then showed this manipulated photo to the tellers, along with images of five similar-looking people.
The police officers did not disclose to the witnesses that they had altered the photo. Instead, Allen’s attorney, Mark Ahlemeyer, only noticed the edits when prosecutors were sharing their evidence. He realized that police reports contained no reference to the photos being altered, and yet the image of his client featured no tattoos. The attorney claimed that the changes let the police rig how the witnesses identified the suspect.
However, the ethics of this story are not so clear-cut. The police officers defended their actions by highlighting that the bank robber did not appear to have tattoos during the robberies. The detective investigating the case, Brett Hawkinson, stated that he believed that Allen had covered up his tattoos with makeup. Therefore, he justified the alterations by claiming that they made Allen more closely resemble how he would have appeared during the robbery. He also claimed that he had been taught to do this by his supervisors. “There are times it has been appropriate to make those small subtle changes,” he said. “The main purpose is not to make the suspect stand out.”
As Oregonlive notes, the police department’s lack of documentation to highlight the changes ran counter to federal guidelines. These guidelines appear to be grounded in a 2003 National Institute of Justice document that acts as a manual for law enforcers. However, this nearly 20-year-old document makes it clear that it is providing suggestions instead of set-in-stone rules. On the subject of providing filler mugshots (the images of individuals who are not suspects that appear alongside the image of the suspect), it advises law enforcers to select fillers whose significant features resemble the subject. It also states that law enforcers should inform witnesses that a suspect’s features are subject to change. A 2017 Department of Justice memorandum on the process of conducting photo arrays, which was released prior to the robberies, provides further guidance. The instructions for how unique features, such as tattoos, should be handled are clear. It states that the subjects of filler photos should be altered to replicate the suspect’s features, not vice versa.
These documents highlight the underlying issue with using photo manipulation in law enforcement: It lacks regulation. The government provides guidelines instead of rules, which police departments are free to ignore. The U.S. justice system needs to enforce how police departments can ethically use photograph manipulation software. Suggestions and best practices do not go far enough.
The New York Times has identified how this lack of regulation has affected law enforcement practices. The New York Police Department told the source that it alters suspect photos but only as a last resort. However, police departments in Los Angeles, Chicago, Philadelphia, and Baltimore all told the source that they did not tamper with photos at all. And the Miami-Dade Police Department stated that it adds suspect tattoos or scars to two out of five filler photographs it shows to witnesses alongside the suspect’s unedited photograph.
As technology continues to evolve, stories such as Allen’s will become more commonplace, and ethical issues will become more complex. Already, police departments are using facial recognition software to conduct ethically murky practices. As Georgetown University has highlighted, at the same time the Portland Police Bureau was photoshopping Allen’s face, the NYPD was using celebrity photos to find criminals. The detectives did this when they only had a highly pixelated surveillance camera image. The facial recognition system they were using could not identify the suspect. One of the detectives thought that the suspect looked like the actor Woody Harrelson. So they put an image of Woody Harrelson into their facial recognition software and identified someone. This action led to an arrest. On the surface, this may sound like an effective method of identifying criminals, but the potential for misidentification is huge. Furthermore, it disproportionately affects minorities. As The Verge makes clear, facial recognition systems are more inaccurate for women and minorities. Therefore, uploading a photo of an actor that resembles a suspect who is a woman or a minority is more likely to lead to inaccurate matches, which would naturally lead to wrongful arrests and wrongful convictions.
In 2021, the U.S. is facing a reckoning on policing. Lawmakers all over the country are passing reform bills as part of an effort to make law enforcement more just. Of course, police violence is taking precedence in these reform efforts, but there are many more subtle abuses that need urgent regulation, such as the misuse of imaging software. It’s impossible to know the true extent of the damage that this has caused. As Georgetown University stated in its report on police use of facial recognition software, “There are probably many more examples that we don’t know about.” We don’t know the extent of the problem. But with regulation, we can begin to prevent further abuses.
