Today, I want to speak about how a new technology -- digital photography -- is modifying how a very old problem -- domestic violence -- is looked at (no puns intended.)
Karin Halperin wrote a very informative article on the subject and I suggest that you read it in its entirety. Here is the illustration used to introduce the story -- it will make you think.
Now, you see what I mean and you're ready for the opening of the story.
Settling into his chair at his cluttered desk on a Tuesday morning, Scott Kessler flicks on his computer and calls up images of injuries. A woman's face emerges, her nose outlined in purplish-blue bruises. Swollen cheeks, lacerated lips, abrasions, scratches, bruised limbs and broken capillaries fill the screen as Kessler, head of the domestic violence bureau in New York's Queens County District Attorney's Office, clicks open recent files, 15 from that morning.
He pauses before an image, pointing out a cut that scores a women's eyelid like an engraving. In another, bumps rise like a ridge from a man's forehead. Kessler zooms in on a woman's back, focusing on a red patch surrounded by black and blue. 'You can see the outline of the object used -- a stick,' he says. 'You'll never see anything like that on a Polaroid.'
At the 112th Precinct in northern Queens, Officer Linda Rivera holds up a 1.2 megapixel Kodak DC-120 with zoom and built-in viewer. 'I was a little nervous when I heard the word 'digital camera,' she says. 'But it's so basic. A victim comes in. We photograph her here or at the hospital. You press two buttons. You see the photo instantly.' Before the coming of digital, 'we got a lot of dark photos. We'd run out of film. It could be spoiled, discolored.' Close-ups, critical for depicting wounds, required cumbersome attachments, some of which had to be fastened to the victim. 'This is quicker and less invasive.'
Digital imaging, used for mug shots and in fingerprint analysis for years, has edged its way into the touchy territory of domestic violence investigations.
Agencies which used Polaroid or 35-millimeter cameras have turned to digital photography because it's easier to use and cheaper to operate.
Here is a comment about 35-millimeter cameras.
"They often get too close to the subject, and so I had blurry pictures," says Timothy Johnson, deputy district attorney in the sex crimes and domestic violence unit in the Boulder (Colorado) District Attorney's Office. Six of the nine police agencies in his jurisdiction switched to digital cameras about two years ago. "In strangulation cases, which in Boulder County is a growing method of choice, the injuries didn't photograph. They overdo the flash. How do you prove strangulation if you don't have marks?"
The author also mentions that digital photography might be altered by software. This is also true with conventional film-based pictures, so the argument is not as strong as you might think -- at least with courts where digital evidence is almost never contested.
Source: Karin Halperin, Salon.com, July 10, 2002
6:06:47 PM Permalink
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