Warning: Story contains references to suicide, sudden death and assault, and graphic details about human remains.
A trauma cleaning business that has been posting graphic death-related images on social media has apologised.
Illustration: Some of Crime Scene Cleaners' photos have garnered more than 100 reactions, dozens of comments, and shares. Photo: RNZ/Vinay Ranchhod
Crime Scene Cleaners co-owner Carl Loader put out a statement this afternoon after RNZ exposed the company's posts this morning.
"We are deeply upset that our social media pages have caused the reaction that they have today. We sincerely apologise to anyone who has been offended by them."
He said staff "thought that by sharing some images from our work, we were raising awareness of some important social issues and what we do as a company".
"As a manager, I should have kept a closer eye on the content that was being shared. We have taken down all of our social media pages and will be reviewing our future on social media."
RNZ has chosen not to republish the images, but, on Facebook alone, counted photos of the aftermath of 15 unattended deaths, two suspected suicides, five attempted suicides or instances of self-harm, five assaults and three other assaults explicitly listed as domestic violence, as well as two photos showing human remains being cleaned off trains.
Crime Scene Cleaners started its Facebook page in March 2019, and it began posting photos of scenes in April 2020, with some garnering more than 100 reactions, dozens of comments, and shares.
The business is a contractor for Ports of Auckland and KiwiRail, and the Auckland and Christchurch City Councils also confirmed they had paid the business for cleans.
The Ministry of Justice confirmed three payments had also been made to the business, in 2017, through the Victim Assistance Scheme.
University of Auckland Professor Mark Henaghan was alarmed the posts had gone out for nearly two years, and in his opinion, charges should be laid.
"There clearly are offences under the Coroners Act and under the Crimes Act."
He also said police needed to investigate the cleaning company's posts immediately.
"You can't rely on Facebook to pull things down that seem inappropriate. You really need the authorities, which is really the police in this particular case, to be laying charges."
In a statement to RNZ, a Meta spokesperson (for Facebook) said the social media company allows "graphic content (with some limitations) to help people raise awareness about those issues".
Facebook's graphic violent and graphic content policy says videos of "partially decomposed bodies" in "non-medical settings" and "sadistic remarks" about the people in the footage, are not allowed to be posted.
But photos of bodies in this state are permitted, with a "warning screen" and limits to stop people under 18 from seeing the posts.
One Facebook user, Juanita Toki, told RNZ that the posts came up unexpectedly in her newsfeed in 2020, soon after her cousin died by suicide.
The images were not of her cousin but were still "traumatic" and "upsetting".
"I saw gory pictures of the aftermath of suicide, I felt a chill all over, I felt sick and so triggered in my stomach," she said.
"Then I was really angry and was openly yelling at my phone: 'Why?'
"I couldn't believe this kind of thing was found just by scrolling," Toki said.
"What awareness would it ever, ever bring? It's horrible and it makes the pain of that person's death look like a frigging joke. How could this happen?"
She directly blamed Facebook algorithms.
"I couldn't stop thinking about what I saw actually. It sticks with you when you see death so glorified ... I felt worried that I might be shocked again, like on guard when I'm scrolling."
New Zealand's Chief Censor David Shanks isn't satisfied by Facebook's screening of Crime Scene Cleaners' page.
"As far back as 2019, Facebook announced that they would be taking a stricter approach to suicide and self-harm content, and I would have hoped that this sort of material would have been identified and detected."
Today he has been talking to other digital safety organisations, and regulators, about "engaging with this company, learning from what's happened here - perhaps educating and helping them".
Victims' advocate Ruth Money saw some of the posts before Facebook and Instagram pages were deactivated today, and called them "absolutely disgusting".
"People's tapu and mana should be upheld and respected."
Like Henaghan, in her opinion, the posts have breached clients' privacy and gone against sections of the Crimes Act and Coroners Act, and the business should be investigated criminally.
"If there is a jury member that sees that, all of a sudden you are risking the criminal procedure. I just have no words for what these cowboys have done."
The Chief Coroner is assessing whether posts breached non-publication orders.
Otago University computer science Professor Ali Knott said Crime Scene Cleaners' posts highlighted why, in his view, Facebook needed to be more transparent about its content monitoring algorithms, and if they were robust enough.
"They are cutting edge, state of the art AI algorithms. We don't know the detail, but more importantly we don't know how the algorithms perform."
The police would not comment when asked whether the business' social media use was being investigated.
The business has clients across the country, from the South Island to Northland.
Auckland Council said it hadn't "technically ruled out" using the business again.
Nor had the Christchurch City Council, which said the cleaning company was paid through the Mayor's Welfare Fund, and the council would seek police advice if it had a similar application again.
KiwiRail also hadn't ruled out using the company, saying it never gave permission for photos to be posted online and but it would monitor whether the company complied in future.
Ports of Auckland said it was shocked by RNZ's story but the future of ongoing contracts with the company would depend on whether Crime Scene Cleaners changed its ways.
Crime Scene Cleaners has said in Facebook posts that New Zealand police and the Ministry of Social Development have paid for cleans too, but these agencies would not confirm this to RNZ, instead saying a Official Information Act request - which can take up to 20 working days - was necessary.
Crime Scene Cleaners helped clean Al Noor mosque after the 2019 terrorist attacks, but Loader told RNZ photos were not taken in the mosque because staff were asked not to have phones onsite.
The police publicly thanked the business for its services at the time.
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