Blog reader Lisa Mercer writes:
Hey Mercury guys,
Several friends told me about a website called thepotshot.com that makes fun of Portland people that get arrested. They love it, but I think it’s awful. Not even criminals deserve to be treated the way they treat them. I tried contacting the address that was given on the site to tell them how I feel but they never returned my email. Maybe you guys could contact them and see where they get the gall to do a website like this.
Thanks and hope to hear from you,
Lisa M.
I went over there to check it out, and sure enough, I think I agree with Lisa. Loathe as I am to give the site any more attention, I couldn’t help emailing the curator, “Trey Starrs,” asking why he decided to start the blog. His response:
Thanks for the interest in the site. How did you hear about me? As to your question, I was laid off recently due to the recession and had a little time on my hands. I loved looking for people I knew on the different county jail rosters when I realized that almost all of these people get arrested and do jail time without the public knowing about it. They are free to commit more crimes because the public is not aware that the person standing next to them was just released from jail for molesting a child or assaulting some innocent person. So it just clicked one night, I’m a genius so why don’t I use my powers for the good of the people? Ha. I have gotten a few hate mails from people that were featured on my site but almost all of the mail is positive and people love it. I get hundreds of hits each day and growing. The public is always mailing me to feature someone they know that was arrested and needs a wake up call, I usually oblige them. I understand that some of these people arrested may be innocent or have just made the one mistake in their life but these are the casualties of war. More often than not, this is the fifth or tenth time these people are getting caught for crimes that no one except the victim knows about. I’m doing something about it and entertaining the public at the same time, performing a community service. That’s my story. Since I’m hurting the feelings of some ugly people, figuratively speaking, I’d like to keep the mask of anonymity on as long as possible to protect myself and my loved ones. Hopefully you understand but feel free to ask me anything you’d like and I’ll do my best to answer what I can. Again thanks for the interest in the site and may ThePotShot live forever.
Yours trully,
Trey Starrs
Trully. So, what do you think? The PotShot:
you need to add the option “is awesome” to your poll.
From just a quick glance, the “hot or not” aspect is pretty offensive, but….. I kinda like the site otherwise, especially the people who have all these other incriminating photos they intentionally publicly posted on the internet (I’m assuming they’re myspace/facebook grabs).
I’m gonna guess that Trey is:
-White
-Idealistic
-Republican
-Possibly racist
-Plagued by low self-esteem
See, it works both ways!
Yeah, you need more options. It’s definitely not harmless, and it may be stupid, but that’s not the entire story. How about “Stupid, offensive and entertaining”?
As usual, cries of libel on the internet are usually overblown, and even if they met the requirements of the law, they will almost certainly never be brought.
Yeah, homophobia and fat jokes. That’s entertaining?
Like I (kinda said) the site is stupid and offensive; the commentary and titles are ragingly sexist, homophobic, occasionally racist, etc.
I just like the part where I see pictures of dirtballs in and out of custody. The juxtaposition is the entertainment, not the written content.
“A great way to get your ass kicked” should be one of the options.
Poor delusional “Trey Starrs.” I like how they think their anonymity is so sacred and how noble of them to want to protect their loved ones, yet not consider that same feeling when blasting others.
I give it less than a week before this person’s real identity is revealed.
This guy is a dumbass, and really not that funny. I looked through about 20 entries and the only thing that made me laugh was the girl who wrote, “high maintence” over her picture with a cheesy font. But I’ll bet that girl would come in just behind “Trey Starrs” on an IQ test.
Don’t forget to make fun of Trey Starrs “friends” who have graciously joined up with him on Facebook. How about a Hot or Not (or douchebag or not) for his fans?
Hah! like this winner: http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100…
This Trey Starrs is clearly an asshole at best, and likely a homophobic, misogynistic, racists, white asshole. But holding criminals up to ridicule is a good thing. A good portion of our media extols or trivializes criminal behavior, especially for monetary gain. The police aren’t respected (nor should be) and jail/prison is the “go to your room” for not being fast or cleaver enough. If the people begin to feel a real shame in stealing, drunk driving, or whatever that’s a good thing.
It is worth noting the people on the site were booked for a crime—not convicted, which seems like an important distinction to me. Poking fun at people who might not have actually committed a crime and calling it some kind of social justice is a little messed up.
Besides, half the charges are theft III. Jimbob is accused of stealing a six-pack… STRING HIM UP!
Why are we even giving this guy attention? Why bother mentioning thepotshot.com? Are we looking for lame controversy? Everytime we mention this guy’s name and his site we promote his ranking on search engines. No matter I like voiceing my opinion on everything! I just running around looking for stuff to have an opinion on no matter how lame. While we are at it let’s give this guy and his site a boost: thepotshot.com | Trey Starrs | thepotshot.com | Trey Starrs |thepotshot.com | Trey Starrs |thepotshot.com | Trey Starrs |thepotshot.com | Trey Starrs |thepotshot.com | Trey Starrs |thepotshot.com | Trey Starrs |thepotshot.com | Trey Starrs |thepotshot.com | Trey Starrs |thepotshot.com | Trey Starrs |thepotshot.com | Trey Starrs |
As spaceman said, not everyone who’s been arrested is guilty.
I just read Matt’s Mercury article about the criminalization of mental illness. I’ve also read about the ‘secret list’ crap downtown, and I think that there’s a pretty good chance that Mr. Starrs website has singled out at least a few people who have mental illnesses and/or addictions and have no access to adequate treatment. Not very funny. People deserve to be held accountable for the crimes they are guilty of, but IMHO they don’t deserve our ridicule.
And if you ARE going to make fun of’em, please be at least a little bit witty.
It’s pretty hypocritical to drag other people through the mud on the ‘nets but want to keep ‘the mask’ of douchbaggy anonymity for himself.
He’s using an alias. He’s got an expensive hosting account, owns the domain and paid for privacy protection. Unemployed, eh? So, I recommend you write abuse@google.com, and simply allege slander and false registration. I operate a completely legit site, and people that were simply spiteful have done so to score points, and it is a big hassle. With this guy it would probably shut him down.
The concept is funny, and I was eager to click through…but the guy’s not very funny. Needs to cut the homophobic insults, and maybe focus on people with more severe charges than “theft II.”
Slightly racist. Definitely homophobic.
If he had someone clever writing for him it could be great. But he’s a painfully obvious douche with his flag waving high.
Ugh, that site is awful. You’re really going to make fun of Down Syndrome? Really?
McDonalds: Please hire “Trey Starrs”. He has too much free time.
Trey’s Mom: Please monitor your son’s web time.
The website is blocked at my work so I haven’t looked at it but I’m thinking it’s very much like a newspaper I’ve seen around lately (my boyfriend actually bought a copy of this paper and it resides in our bathroom) which is garish and publishes pictures of peoples’ mugshots. Nowhere in the paper does it say that these people HAVE NOT BEEN CONVICTED.
I’m actually curious as to why it’s legal to present peoples’ mugshots in a way that makes it all but impossible to imagine they might not be guilty. Trey Starrs says that some of them “might” be innocent but if they are, they’re just casualties of war. What war?
News: they are ALL innocent. Because they haven’t yet been tried and convicted.
Sarahfina – this site is like that paper, except it also includes additional pictures of the people that he’s mined from myspace, ratings on how hot they are, commentary on how gay they are, and details about their physical stature and other personal information. And it pretty much only shows the relatively attractive females who have been arrested… plus a few dudes.
Ugh, can we liberals all stop being such criminal-kissers? I believe with all my heart that the system sucks in a lot of ways, prosecutors and cops have way too much power, the death penalty is applied in a patently racist manner, and all accused should have the benefit of competent counsel and a fair trial.
With that out of the way: spend some time with criminals, cops, prosecutors, judges, private defense attorneys and public defenders (as I have): 98% of those arrested are factually guilty, 90% say so up front, and well over 50% of all accused are irredeemable shitwits. While it’s very important to make sure the process is fair, let’s romanticize their precious “innocence” a little less, shall we?
Their arrest, mug shot, and booking details are all a matter of public record. Guess what? In two months, their conviction records and police reports will be public, too.
@CC: “let’s romanticize their precious “innocence” a little less, shall we?”
No.
While I agree with your numbers, (more or less) the way we treat the other 2% is far more important than how we treat the 98%. England, (before the American Revolution,) considered it better to let 10 guilty men go free than to punish an innocent one, and one of the reasons we rebelled was that we didn’t think that was good enough. For instance, Ben Franklin said that he’d rather let 100 guilty people go free than punish an innocent one. And at the same time, we’ve set up a very complicated court system to try to sort the innocent from the guilty, and yes, it is far from perfect, and innocent people do get convicted all the time, BUT it does do significantly better than the police do by themselves. So rather than punish (what we know statistically is) 1 innocent and 49 guilty, why doesn’t this guy wait a few months until those 49 are convicted and then post the details? I don’t think that that is too much to ask…
Just like many said all the people are booked for a crime, but not convicted. It’s tasteless and a waste of time. As well as the guy put’s pictures of pretty girls who never have been convicted at all that he apparentley knows and who didn’t give him the time or day, and so he makes up stories and find’s pictures to ridicule them. Which makes no scence to why he put’s them on this a page in the first place. From reading it sounds like he makes up most of his own comments and posing as other people to make his sight look more popular. I have done some research and rumor has it “Trey Starrs” actually works at a strip club named Stars, and apparently is a big pervert who has a lot of free time. I agree with a above comment… there should be a box for ” A great way to get your ass kicked” The guy is dilutional.
i am just a typical citizen of the united states. however, because of the idiocy of the internet and the police state in which we seem to be living, i have become an innocent victim of some fat ignorant individual named Trey Starrs. This jerk seems to take great sadistic pleasure in browsing the public domain for people who are arrested around the country. He never stops to see if people are innocent, wrongly accused or victims of unfortunate circumstances.
Instead, he pathetically hides behind the secrecy of the web to pass judgment on people that he doesn’t know, doesn’t meet, doesn’t encounter to poke fun at them. Just wait world, Trey Starrs will be exposed for the shallow, pathetic excuse for humanity that he is.
i am just a typical citizen of the united states. however, because of the idiocy of the internet and the police state in which we seem to be living, i have become an innocent victim of some fat ignorant individual named Trey Starrs. This jerk seems to take great sadistic pleasure in browsing the public domain for people who are arrested around the country. He never stops to see if people are innocent, wrongly accused or victims of unfortunate circumstances.
Instead, he pathetically hides behind the secrecy of the web to pass judgment on people that he doesn’t know, doesn’t meet, doesn’t encounter to poke fun at them. Just wait world, Trey Starrs will be exposed for the shallow, pathetic excuse for humanity that he is.
sorry for the duplicate entry submission. just in case trey starrs thinks he’s funny, i am legally pursuing charges against him for slander and wrongful accusations. I hope he will enjoy spending his unemployment money on an attorney. he needs to know about something called the consequences of one’s actions.
FWIW, in terms of daily page views and ad revenue, thepotshot.com is now equal to blueoregon.com. I ain’t happy.
I was just showed this blog site or whatever you call it…and I really feel the guy is a total jerk. I believe he will some day some way pay the price for passing judgements on people the way he does. I do not think he has ever walked in these peoples shoes ,but never say never you never know what life might deal you. You shold worry about the shoes you walk in and always look over your shoulder you say you watch these people do you not think you are also watched? I am sure you proably have hit some real hurtful spots in alot of your babbling opions that you write. SHAME ON YOU!!!!!!!!!!!!!