The Westbrook Police Department issued an apology Tuesday for publishing a digitally altered photo of a drug bust.
In the statement issued early Tuesday afternoon, the department said an officer involved in a drug bust on Brackett Street took a photograph of the seizure. But the officer wanted to add the department patch to the photo.
The officer used a photo-editing app to add the patch. That app, then, altered other aspects of the photo, including the size of the packaging seized.
The photo was then shared on the department’s Facebook page, where the public raised concern about the image.
“We apologize for this oversight. It was never our intent to alter the image of the evidence,” the department said in the statement, adding later that “This image distracted from the message we wanted to share, which is that dangerous drugs have been removed from our community.”
The department pledged to allow the news media to view the original evidence to verify that it “does actually exist.”
