In 2017, Tyrone Allen was charged for four Oregon bank robberies. A photo of Allen, who has several face tattoos, was going to be presented to witnesses – but none of them had said the robber had face tattoos.
So Portland police photoshopped the tattoos off his mugshot!
After erasing his tattoos and darkening his skin tone to make him look more like the suspect, police didn’t document the changes.
71% of wrongful convictions are because of eyewitnesses identifying the wrong person – so this is extremely dangerous. What happened to Allen?
His attorney was actually able to negotiate down his sentence to a few months – citing that while he was on pretrial release, he mentored youth to avoid the “path of gangs, drugs and crime.”
“[He] would benefit more by staying in the community and continuing the process of change he has already started rather than being incarcerated,” a friend wrote to his judge.
Allen’s overjoyed to avoid decades in prison, but he’s not the only one who got the photoshop treatment. This raises major questions.
How many times have police dishonestly photoshopped a suspect's photo without it making the news? As technology improves, how far will they be able to go? This could eventually mean the incarceration of any Black person anywhere – and shows just how corrupt this system can be.