The picture, she said, is burned in her memory.

“This is my world. This is my son,” she said in a recent interview. “And they’re taking pictures and sending it around? Why?”

And the worst part of all, she said: “My son was still alive when that photograph was taken.”

In her lawsuit, Brookins said the taking and sharing of the photo violated her right to privacy and exacerbated her pain and trauma.

The Philadelphia Police Department declined to comment because of the ongoing litigation.

Lawyers for the city have asked a federal judge to dismiss the case, saying that while “there is no doubt that (Brookins) has suffered a tragic loss and has been further subjected to callous actions by the individuals who shared a sensitive photo,” that does not meet the threshold of a civil rights violation.

A judge has not yet weighed in.

Brookins’ lawyer, John Coyle, said police had secured the scene and were the only people with the vantage point to have taken the photo.

“No members of the public were in a position to lean over the railing and take that photo,” Coyle said, adding that the image was shared across various social media platforms, including Facebook.

Police officers taking photos at crime scenes is not a new phenomenon. The widow of NBA All-Star Kobe Bryant settled a lawsuit with Los Angeles County for $28.5 million last year after first responders were found to have shared grisly photos from the scene of the helicopter crash that killed Bryant and his daughter. And a New York woman recently filed a lawsuit against transit authorities who she said shared a photo of her husband after he was shot to death on a train platform in January.

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