I have a tendency to become snide when the issue of mugshots — or the lack thereof — is brought up.

Back in the days of the Operation Rockfish police corruption case, I titled a column, “Here’s your mugshots, now leave me alone.” 

Probably not the best use of judgment, but as I say, I tend to become snide when the issue is brought up because I just don’t get the obsession.

I’m a word guy. What’s on the digital printed page is more important to me than seeing a photo of someone taken at a time when they are not having the best day of their life.

That was the case Wednesday with the embezzlement story out of the Roanoke Rapids Graded School District. 

This story didn’t just fall into my inbox. I received a call around 1:30 p.m. from a very concerned person asking why it hadn’t hit the press. My answer was that I simply didn’t know about it. There had been no media release, and neither I nor the rest of the press — namely me and the local paper — received one until around 5:45 p.m.

Let me be snide once more: When I say the “rest of the press,” I am only referring to rrspin and the local paper. A certain Facebook page that posts what they hear on the scanner and throws personal opinions into said posts hardly meets the definition of working press.

Now that I’ve got that out of my system — for now, at least — let’s get back to the mugshot issue and why there wasn’t one initially. 

You can look at the lead photo of this column and see what I encountered on eCourts when I found the arrest warrant. There was no mugshot.

So, I dug through the documents, got the information I needed, sent an email to the school system inquiring about the person’s employment status, and worked on the story. 

The warrants confirmed nearly everything I needed for a breaking news story: Confirmation that the person was employed by the school system, the amounts of the alleged embezzlement, how it allegedly happened, the amount of the unsecured bond set by the clerk, and the next court date.

It’s what we refer to in the business as enterprise reporting — acting on a tip rather than being handed a story on a silver platter that plops into your inbox. I was satisfied I had the story and could add the response from the school system and other details later or in a separate piece.

I posted the story and, as my Jedi senses predicted, the first comment was about the wait for a mugshot. My kindly Jedi senses turned into Sith rage — well, not that bad, but more like a rolling of the eyes and a feeling of "here we go again." It’s Rockfish all over.

I thought of the closing lines of the old Rod Stewart song: “Every picture tells a story, don’t it?” Sorry, Rod; sometimes they do, but most of the time, in the case of a mugshot, they don’t.

About the only mugshot that told a complete story was the one of the person currently occupying the White House. You know the one — the mugshot that says, "Here’s a person who doesn’t respect the rule of law and thinks it’s beneath him." 

But that’s because when it comes to him, I’m biased — and not in a supportive way, but in the way you feel about a wasp or bee that keeps flying around your head and you wish it would just go away.

I digress, but not really, because there’s a psychology to the mugshot-obsessed. 

There’s a feeling that a story isn’t complete without one, whereas as a journalist, my feeling is the story is complete when you get to the final sentence.

Then there’s the school of thought that because a mugshot isn’t included, I’m hiding something — that perhaps because of the person's race, someone is being protected. Again, it wasn’t until the RRPD sent out a release providing more details that a mugshot was even available. 

Again, see the lead photo for what I encountered when I looked at the warrant and the conditions of release document, which also contained no photo.

Personally, I think it’s a theater of cruelty syndrome. The mugshot, in some instances, is the first sentence served, even though in this country you’re still innocent until proven guilty.

Law enforcement isn’t required to send a mugshot with their releases. In the Wednesday story, there wasn’t one available during my early efforts to get the news out through research rather than waiting for that silver platter with all the trimmings.

I hope this column isn’t too snide, but when it comes to me and mugshots, it probably is — Lance Martin