Windsor, Ont., was in the middle of a 15-week civic workers' strike when Google's Street View cameras photographed the city on the Detroit River. ((Google)) Windsor city council says Google Maps Street View is painting a rather unpleasant picture of the border city.

Council voted Monday night to contact Google and ask the internet giant to return and take photographs of the Ontario city again.

The Google cameras were in the city one day in the summer of 2009.

However, the newly released street-level photographs captured the city in the middle of a 15-week civic workers' strike, with unkempt gardens, overflowing garbage bins, and striking workers on the picket line.

Google Street View cameras photographed the scene of a fatal stabbing outside a strip club on Wyandotte Street East on July 21, 2009. Google has since removed this image. ((Google))

When Google launched Windsor Street View on Feb. 9, CBC News also discovered visitors to the website were shown images of a homicide scene outside Leopard's Lounge strip club, complete with police cars and yellow tape.

Google has since removed the photographs, inserting a black screen in their place.

Residents complain to council

City councillors said Monday they have received complaints from Windsorites about how their city is being portrayed on the internet.

Coun. Ron Jones said the city's parks, in particular, don't look like they usually do.

"When I saw the pictures of the garbage in Dieppe park, the overgrown grass, when you looked into Queen Elizabeth, which is normally just gorgeous and you saw the garbage and the dead flowers and so on. That's not Windsor, that's not the Windsor that we all love," said Jones.

Google Street View provides panoramic views of more than 150 cities and towns across Canada, including images from every province and territory except Nunavut.

Street View was originally launched in May 2007, and has expanded as its cameras, mounted atop moving vehicles — and recently a snowmobile in the Rockies — photograph more and more communities.