CRIME SCENES, TOUCHED UP

This page on the Toronto Crime Stoppers site is meant to be a help to the police — “a series of crime scene photos in which victim(s) and perpetrator(s) have been digitally removed,” notes Defense Tech pal Xeni Jardin. A batch of images, for example, that “once depicted acts of violent sexual abuse of a nine-year-old girl, [now] contain[s] only inanimate objects — a sofa, a bed, a wall, a water fountain. They’re published online with a public request that anyone who recognizes the site contact authorities.“
But, in reality, they show just how fragile evidence can be in the age of digital cameras. If victims can be Photoshopped out of crime scene, who’s to say a .45 can’t be cut-and-pasted into a suspect’s hand? Why couldn’t a perp be airbrushed into an alibi?
I’ve got an article in an upcoming issue of Details magazine that tackles this topic. And here is a related story I wrote last summer for the Times.

February 5th, 2005 | Cops and Robbers | Comments Off Both comments and pings are currently closed.