The Carroll County Times and a few other news reporting pages posts articles when someone is arrested. The articles include a brief description of what allegedly happened, and the person(s) in question mug shot photo.

  This is causing severe humiliation for the person, their family and their friends. People do not read these articles and think, “well they have not been found guilty yet. I should not judge.”  In a perfect world, that would be the case.   Unfortunately it is not. Children are going to school and facing bullying because their mother, father, aunt, uncle, etc was posted on the Carroll County Times Facebook page. People are pulling their children out of events because the person of interests child is also doing that event. People get messages from people with threats, name calling, etc because they simply seen an article.

These people have not been found guilty. These people have not yet been to court. It is extremely rare that a follow up article gets posted about what an actual Judge found. What if their case was dismissed? Now they face public humiliation for the rest of their life. In a county, that most of us grew up in. It's very unfair that these people faces are all over social media, Newspapers, and the media before they're given due process. It's a trial by media, and it's very just not right.

It is understood that the news needs to be reported. Why can’t articles like this be posted after their court date? Morally, this is just wrong in a lot of ways.

In addition, the comments under these articles are cruel. The comments do not even seem to be monitored by anyone. There are comments making fun of the persons appearance, wishing death on them, telling them to rot in jail. Horrible things that should not be allowed to get commented, much less stay up. There’s comment filters available to anyone who has a page on Facebook that can automatically block certain words. 

Please stop posting these type of articles. 

Petition for the Carroll County Times to stop posting mug shots. They are humiliating members of their community. Set a better example, be accountable for ripple effects of your actions.

Email-
Hello. We have respectfully, started a petition asking the Carroll County Times to stop posting allegations of charges with peoples mug shots. In addition, the comments on the Facebook page are not being monitored. 

I have attached some screen shots of recent comments under some of these articles that are the topic of interest. As you can see, these comments are attacking peoples appearances, their race, their families, their genital areas,  wishing harm and death on them. 
These people have not been found guilty yet in a court of law. They go on trial by social media. It is public humiliation in a weak time in their life. Not everyone that commits a crime is a bad person. Sometimes, they aren’t even guilty. This is for a judge, jury and states attorney to decide. 
We understand that the Carroll County Times needs things to report. Our request is simply, post after done on is found guilty. They do put “ Alleged“ in the articles when discussing charges. However, unfortunately the comments never reflect on that. 
A lot of these people have children, families and friends. These people also face public humiliation. I currently have a friend that has a family member that was victim of the Carroll County Times mug shot shaming, and there are parents pulling their children out of sporting events simply because they seen the article. The community holds these people accountable before a Judge even does.
Rarely do they update an article to let the community know that someone was in facts found Not Guilty in their fair trial that they have a right to.