Alabama sheriff's 'thugshot' Christmas tree post receives flak online; deleted later

A sheriff's department in the US state of Alabama is receiving a lot of flak online for decorating a Christmas tree with mugshots of the accused. The now deleted Facebook post showed a Christmas tree decorated with pictures of suspects. According to the reports by Alabama.com, president of the Alabama NAACP, Bernard Simelton termed this as “despicable behavior by the Mobile County Sheriff’s Department”.

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Alabama police receives criticism 

“We have decorated our Tree with THUGSHOTS to show how many Thugs we have taken off the streets of Mobile this year! We could not have done it without our faithful followers!,'' read the caption with the image.

According to the reports by The Associated Press, more than 7,900 people commented on the post. There were few who also commented in favour of the image. However, most comments said that the post was ‘demeaning and cruel treatment by the sheriff’s department’. 

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As perreports by Alabama.com,  Lori Myles, spokeswoman with the Mobile County Sheriff’s Department said that the message that the department aimed at share is getting lost by people who “are out of town” and posting on the Team Sheriff Facebook page. She said that the post was intended to show the cooperation between police and the community on social media and also how it can help in solving crimes. She told AP, “It’s not their first rodeo.They’ve been continuous with multiple arrests”. 

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(Image Credits: RepresentativeImage/Unsplash)