Atlanta police say internal rules were violated when a woman, seen in multiple images posted on Instagram, posed on a squad car.
“Obviously, this is against our protocol,” police spokeswoman Elizabeth Espy said Tuesday. She said the department’s Office of Professional Standards will be handling the internal investigation.
In the photos, a woman sits on the trunk of a patrol car. An officer, police said, appears to be making the hand gesture of a fraternity in one of the photos, but his face is not in the frame. However, the car’s license plate is in full view.
The photos, which were taken outside SPIN restaurant on Peters Street, appeared one day ago on the Instagram feed of a woman with the handle @garcianovega (She later changed her handle to @marriedtothemobbb and removed the photos with the Atlanta police car from her page).
"I would take a pic today but I might end up on the news," the woman said Tuesday in an Instagram post.
Espy said police became aware of the photos when alerted by media outlets. It is not clear when the department’s investigation will be finished.
This isn’t the first time a city agency has been under investigation over racy photos.
Last year, images depicting multiple women posing provocatively in front of a truck at Fire Station No. 2 and wearing Atlanta Fire Rescue gear, appeared on the Backpage Georgia website. Backpage, an online classifieds portal, has been accused of facilitating sex trafficking.
Two Atlanta firefighters were disciplined after the incident. They were demoted from lieutenant to firefighter, and each suspended for 10 days, fire spokesman Cortez Stafford said.
— Information from The Atlanta Journal-Constitution’s archives was used in this article.
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