Police department apologizes for sharing AI-altered photo of seized drugs
These drugs were seized during a police operation on Brackett Street in Westbrook
By Russ Reed
Click here for updates on this story
WESTBROOK, Maine (WMTW) — A police department in Maine has issued a public apology after the agency said it inadvertently shared an image of seized drugs that had been “substantially” altered by an artificial intelligence tool.
The Westbrook Police Department initially shared the altered photograph to its Facebook page at 7 p.m. Sunday. The photo was part of a post informing the public about a drug bust that was made at a Brackett Street residence on Tuesday, June 24.
Shortly before 11 a.m. Tuesday, police shared another Facebook post stating the department had received multiple phone calls and messages from people who wanted to know why an AI-generated photo was used in Sunday’s post.
In the comments of Sunday’s Facebook post, people said they believed the image was generated with AI because the packaging on the drugs was in gibberish.
“We want to set the record straight — this is NOT an AI-generated photo,” the Westbrook Police Department wrote on Facebook. “What you see is what was seized by officers during the course of the drug arrests. Is the packaging weird and look like gibberish or a different language? Yes. But that is legitimately what was located and seized by officers. The packaging is most likely foreign, and it is possible that whoever made the packaging used AI to make a clearly knock-off package.
“What we seized for packaging is not uncommon for us to seize in drug arrests,” the police department added in its statement. “Illegal drugs and related paraphernalia are manufactured and sold in illicit ways. It is not like going to a reputable store and buying items from a reputable manufacturer. We assure you that Westbrook PD is not and would never generate an AI photo to try and depict evidence that was seized.”
However, the initial post and the follow-up post were deleted from the Westbrook Police Department’s Facebook page sometime early Tuesday afternoon.
At 12:50 p.m. Tuesday, the police department admitted that the photo it had shared to Facebook earlier was in fact altered.
The department also shared the original photograph of the seized drugs, which was taken by an officer who was involved in the drug bust.
According to police, the officer wanted to add the department’s patch to the photo to identify Westbrook as the arresting agency.
The officer used a photoshop app to insert the patch in the picture and then shared that image to one of the department’s Facebook administrators, who posted it to the page.
Westbrook police Capt. Steve Goldberg told Norah Hogan of Maine’s Total Coverage that the officer used ChatGPT to add the department’s patch to the photo.
“Unbeknownst to anyone, when the app added the patch, it altered the packaging and some of the other attributes on the photograph. None of us caught it or realized it,” the Westbrook Police Department said in the follow-up Facebook post. “We apologize for this oversight. It was never our intent to alter the image of the evidence. We never realized that using a photoshop app to add our logo would alter a photograph so substantially.
“As noted in the previous post, it is not uncommon for us to encounter drug-related materials with gibberish text on the packaging, as they are manufactured and sold in illicit ways. When initially alerted to the public concerns of the image, we assumed this was the case in this situation as well,” police added. “Clearly, we should have looked further into the shared image.”
The Westbrook Police Department stated that it considers this incident “a valuable lesson learned,” and that the altered image distracted from the message police wanted to share, which is that dangerous drugs have been removed from the community.
In the initial Facebook post, police said that officers had seized approximately 61 grams of fentanyl and 23 grams of methamphetamine in connection with the Brackett Street investigation.
The following six people were charged as a result of the drug bust:
Sara Dymond, 46, of Westbrook, was charged with aggravated trafficking in scheduled drugs and violation of conditions of release. Police said Dymond was on seven sets of bail conditions. Christopher Cavallaro, 45, of Scarborough, was charged with aggravated trafficking in scheduled drugs and violation of conditions of release. Police said Cavallaro was on two sets of bail conditions. Saddiq Ali, 32, of Portland, was charged with unlawful possession of methamphetamine, failure to provide a correct name to police and violation of conditions of release. Police said Ali was on three sets of bail conditions and also had an unrelated warrant out for his arrest. Daniel Beausang, 37, of Portland, was charged with unlawful possession of scheduled drugs. Jordan Madsen, 26, was charged with unlawful possession of scheduled drugs. Erica Mathies, 25, of Standish, was charged with unlawful possession of scheduled drugs.
Please note: This content carries a strict local market embargo. If you share the same market as the contributor of this article, you may not use it on any platform.
