NYC police union accused of 'shaming' campaign for posting photos of homeless online

UPDATE (3:03 p.m. ET, Aug. 14, 2015): The Sergeants Benevolent Association released a statement Friday which said Flickr was responsible for removing the photos, and that the union plans to move the pictures to another website. The union said  that the campaign, "was not a publicity stunt or the petulant actions of a frustrated union leader," but meant to "illuminate the increasing sense of frustration among residents, workers and visitors to the city."

A New York City police union says it posted photos of homeless people online in an attempt to curb "quality-of-life offences" through public shaming. But the photos have now been taken down.

The Sergeants Benevolent Association, New York's largest police union, encouraged police, alongside their friends and family, to take pictures of homeless individuals as part of the "Peek-a-Boo, We See You Too" campaign. The union would then post the photos to Flickr.

The collection contained photos of surprised men and women lying on the sidewalk next to garbage, often with a sign asking for help. Many of the subjects are asleep. There are a few photos of individuals urinating on the street. 

One photo showed a woman sitting on the sidewalk with a young girl in her lap, as seen above, while another titled "Bed and breakfast" displays a shirtless man sleeping on a carry bag.

The campaign began with a letter to union members from its president Ed Mullins, according to the New York Post.

"As you travel about the city of New York, please utilize your smartphones to photograph the homeless lying in our streets, aggressive panhandlers, people urinating in public or engaging in open-air drug activity and quality-of-life offences of every type," the letter read.

Police officers are not allowed to take photos of people while on duty, so the letter suggested members snap the pictures in their free time.  

"We are an open invitation to come here because it's OK to smoke marijuana; it's OK to urinate in public; it's OK to remain homeless in the street," Mullins said in an interview with CBS New York on Monday. 

Numerous media outlets and Twitter users quickly denounced the campaign for "shaming" the homeless.

"If they post pictures of vulnerable homeless people on the internet, that reflects a real contempt on their part," William Burnett, co-chairman of civil rights group Picture the Homeless, told Al-Jazeera America. 

NYC Mayor Bill de Blasio told CBS that "There's no law in this country against sitting on a park bench. There's no law against standing next to a store and asking for spare change. But there sure as hell is a law against a lot of the quality-of-life abuses that bother a lot of us in this city."

On Aug. 13, the photos were removed from Flickr. A representative for the union didn't immediately respond to a request for comment on why or who removed them. 

The Guardian notes that the New York Post also participated in the campaign with a front page photo of a man relieving himself in the middle of a road and the headline, "20 years of cleaning up New York City pissed away."

Homelessness in New York City is at its highest level since since the Great Depression, according to the advocacy group Coalition for the Homeless. More than 116,000 different people slept in the city's homeless shelters in 2014, the group says.

Last Thursday, de Blasio announced a plan to deal with mental health issues among homeless people involved in violent incidents.