A picture is worth a thousand sad words.

There aren't any words appropriate for this situation. The only good news is that the two dopers have been arrested, as I understand. I assume the child is now in custody of a welfare service.

caw

Let't talk about how this photo was originally leaked with the boy's face un-pixelated. That was sad.

Mod Note: Duplicate threads merged.

Horrible, horrible, horrible.

No word on the parents?

Albedo said:

Let't talk about how this photo was originally leaked with the boy's face un-pixelated. That was sad.

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Yeah, one more anonymous child's face joining the millions of others on the Internet is way sadder than that child being neglected like this.

JimmyB27 said:

Yeah, one more anonymous child's face joining the millions of others on the Internet is way sadder than that child being neglected like this.

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Did I say it was more sad? Nope, only that the standout feature of this case is the dickery of leaking the photo uncensored. The mere fact that the ones who did it violated the child's privacy so completely shows that, whoever they were, they gave less than a metric teacup of fucks about his welfare. I suppose what the parents did (overdose?) was so abominable that the kid deserves to be shamed by proxy for sharing genes with the horrible nasty junkies? I'm not sure, I can't follow mob justice logic.

How is the kid being shamed? How is his privacy being violated? He shows his face everywhere he goes - not exactly private. Sure, it's going to be seen by more people, being online, but so what?

The couple in the car were the child's grandmother and a friend of hers.

The grandmother had been awarded custody of the child just six weeks earlier, presumably because his own parents were ... how do we put this? ... not able to care for him.

JimmyB27 said:

How is the kid being shamed? How is his privacy being violated? He shows his face everywhere he goes - not exactly private. Sure, it's going to be seen by more people, being online, but so what?

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Is this a trick question? Because they released to the internet an uncensored picture of him sitting in a car with some overdose victims, so he will never have a chance to not be that kid from bad circumstances? The same reason it's standard practice to pixelate the faces of minors caught up in events they had no part in? It's even more egregious in this instance, when there was no conceivable reason to release the photo in the first place, other than a desire to dehumanise people with substance abuse disorders.

Albedo said:

...he will never have a chance to not be that kid from bad circumstances?

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Never? He's four. You really think anyone's going to be able to recognise him in even just a couple of years' time?

JimmyB27 said:

How is the kid being shamed? How is his privacy being violated? He shows his face everywhere he goes - not exactly private. Sure, it's going to be seen by more people, being online, but so what?

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Well there's private shame, when in your mind you know your family situation is bad and it's either embarrassing or psychologically damaging but at least your parents or caretakers don't do crap in public or make some sort of effort to keep it together in public "for the sake of the kids." The kid knows the reality but the community doesn't. Or only suspects. NOW, he's memorably attached to these shameful folks, magnifying the number of people in his community (and beyond) who know the "dirty secret" of their family. Sure, it starts as "poor little Billy Joe," until he's older and other parents don't want him to play with their kids. And older still, when he struggles in school or wears too much black clothing and people write him off because he's from "that family."

It's one thing to know a kid comes from a difficult family, quite another to see the full extent of it. That's harder to forget. Like it or not, in all liklihood the shame will attach to him if he stays where he is. He's "the kid in that picture" now. The cops should have stuck with showing the granny and her friend and left the kid out entirely. They could have said "with a child in the car" and made their point without him in the photo.

Yeah, I didn't like anything about the cops moralizing bullshit here.

Look at the sad face of overdosing people with a CHILD! The terrible scandal. Are they releasing pics of every drunk driver they pull over? Every person they take on a warrant for assaulting someone? For killing someone?

I'm not into the 'but the CHILDREN' pearl clutching they seem to want people to engage in. Lots of bad shit happens, to lots of people. Yes, that kid was dealt a crap hand. The cops want to do something about it, start some tutoring sessions for him, try to get him into Big Brothers/Big Sisters and volunteer; actually do something besides some paternalistic shaming "for the children."

cornflake said:

Are they releasing pics of every drunk driver they pull over? Every person they take on a warrant for assaulting someone? For killing someone?

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Well, yeah. Actually, they are.

e.g. https://www.newsday.com/long-island/crime/recent-li-mug-shots-1.222934

JimmyB27 said:

Never? He's four. You really think anyone's going to be able to recognise him in even just a couple of years' time?

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I don't think the minor's young age makes it okay that they released crime scene photographs involving a minor.

James D. Macdonald said:

Well, yeah. Actually, they are.

e.g. https://www.newsday.com/long-island/crime/recent-li-mug-shots-1.222934

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A local paper printing mug shots isn't at all the same to me as the cops themselves posting photos from a particular in situ scene.

JimmyB27 said:

Never? He's four. You really think anyone's going to be able to recognise him in even just a couple of years' time?

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Becuase his classmates in high school are never going to google his name...

The picture wasn't leaked, it was released. And as a state work product it generally isn't allowed to be obscured or pixellated, just released or not released.

I'm not sure what I think, but I did want to pose a question to get other perspectives... What do you think the difference is between releasing this photo unobscured and the photo of the boy in Syria (the The Five Year Old with the 1000 Mile Stare post)?

Is it that the Syrian conflict is larger or more important?
Is it that this boy is American?

In a small town, with or without photos from the police, everyone would know the child's identity.

The world is becoming a small town.

cornflake said:

Yeah, I didn't like anything about the cops moralizing bullshit here.

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Ditto.

heza said:

I'm not sure what I think, but I did want to pose a question to get other perspectives... What do you think the difference is between releasing this photo unobscured and the photo of the boy in Syria (the The Five Year Old with the 1000 Mile Stare post)?

Is it that the Syrian conflict is larger or more important?
Is it that this boy is American?

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I think it's that one is journalism, in a way journalism, especially war journalism works. Someone goes and takes photos of the atrocities for the world to see, because the world cannot see it otherwise.

This is cops, not journalists, moralizing, not documenting.

The news LOVE horrible things. Aside from that boy in this thread, take a look at this "gem" one of my Facebook friends listed.

http://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory/warrants-mom-sought-men-sexually-assault-daughter-10-42083866

There are some people we call "animals," and then there is this "mother" person. Jesus, poor girl.

We are a nation of bystanders, but there's nothing "innocent" about it.

A Memphis couple was filmed by onlookers after overdosing on heroin on Monday afternoon. The crowd stood around the couple laughing and filming the incident as they waited for emergency medical assistance.

According to the New York Daily News, the couple had snorted the heroin at a Walgreens and were spotted by a driver who found them hunched over and passed out on the street.


Courtland Garner shared a video of the couple through Facebook Live, saying in the video, “Man they found some good dope.” He added, “that fella might be dead there.” Garner can be heard laughing in the video.


When asked why he didn’t help the couple, Garner told WREG, “I thought about it, but it wasn’t any of my business to help.” He added that he didn’t call for emergency assistance because someone else already had.

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In some ways cell phones are a wonderful convenience. In other ways, they are shoving us one step closer to the abyss.