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Family Has Right of Privacy In Decapitation Photos
big6joe sends in an update to a morbid story we discussed last year: a California appeals court has overturned a lower court ruling, granting the family of an 18-year-old woman who was killed in a traffic accident in 2006 privacy rights and recourse against the California Highway Patrol. "In a case that highlights how the ease of online communication can overthrow both common sense and basic decency, a California appeals court has ruled that families have a right of privacy in the death images of their loved ones. In 2006, an eighteen-year-old woman was decapitated in a traffic accident. Two of the police officers who reported to the scene emailed photos of the woman's body to their friends and family one Halloween."
http://www.nikkicatsouras.net/
Surprisingly, the ODPS videos are still available.
Sounds like they have a problem with immature police officers as well. Hopefully the officers got reprimanded for doing that.
One was suspended 25 days (w/o pay), the other resigned (but says it was for reasons unrelated to the accusation).
One thing nags at me: family says they did not have a legal right to prevent websites from carrying the photos. However, the photos should still be copyright CHP.
I wonder how the case would have stood if it had been an unrelated bystander who took the photos and intentionally displayed them to the world?
How would one make the police force (or the military for that matter) a no go area for character dwarfes, while attracting people where, uhm, you don't have to wash your soul after each time you had contact with them, or heard about them in the news? I wonder.
It's called civilian oversight police review boards. Any police force not kept in check by one will eventually become a fascist gang, if it doesn't just start that way. Positions of power attract those who will abuse it.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"