Facebook's Graphic Images !

This week brought another example of the poor taste of subject matter making an appearance on the internet.  Four Victorian police officers were killed when a heavy refrigerated truck ploughed into two police cars stopped in the emergency lane on Melbourne's Eastern freeway.

Within hours, pictures of the mangled remains of these four human beings were circulating  on Facebook.  The fact that they were police officers in uniform simply added to the disrespect shown and the scene depicted would have been available to relatives before the usual courtesy of notification of the deaths was possible.

The story that emerged is typical of the duties police undertake on a daily basis.  Two officers in a marked police car were observing traffic when they noticed a Porsche speeding at 140 kph and pulled it over.  That offence called for the car to be impounded and they called for backup, resulting in another police car with two more officers arriving on the scene.

Somehow, a heavy refrigerated truck struck the police cars and the group of officers, killing them instantly.  It is alleged that the driver of the Porsche was unharmed and he immediately commenced to take pictures of the accident scene on his mobile phone camera.  It is further alleged that he then left the scene on foot and shared the pictures with friends, resulting in them appearing on Facebook.

The driver of the truck remained on the scene and was later admitted to hospital when he suffered a medical  episode related to the accident.  There seems to be evidence that the Porsche driver had been drug tested and returned a positive result before the crash occurred.

This 41 year old Porsche driver is a multi millionaire mortgage broker.  He is in police custody but has not been charged.  The police have appealed to Facebook to take down those photos and it seems that once again human dignity is a casualty when photographs of what is a crime scene appear on the internet to appease the bad taste held by some viewers.

There are elements of the criminal fraternity who will rejoice at police deaths, just as those with insular tendencies applauded the massacre of Muslims in prayer in their mosques.  No doubt Facebook will take down these pictures, but the damage has already been done and most decent people will be outraged that this type of thing gets wide publicity.

Once again it is evident that Facebook is a double edged sword.  It is a media outlet open to everyone and that includes the few with bizarre ideas of what constitutes " entertainment ".  Unfortunately, Facebook has been slow to implement a cull of matter that is offensive to good taste !