A chaotic scene from this year’s Boston Marathon serves as the backdrop for an advertisement by the Boston Police Foundation asking for donations. This distasteful billboard has been plastered up just around the corner from Suffolk University’s campus for months now.

It is well past time for the Boston Police Foundation to remove the ad and apologize for its unacceptable content.

Hanging over the intersection of Bowdoin and Cambridge Streets above Dunkin’ Donuts, the ad prominently displays the now famous photo of Bill Iffrig, a 78-year-old runner who fell down moments after the first explosion, three Boston police officers springing into action, and the words, “There’s a new team in town.”

The photograph alone stirs up a sickening cocktail of emotions for those of us affected by the bombing who must pass the ad each day on our way to class or work. The addition of the ad’s words makes the pain insulting.

Used as a news photograph, the picture is necessary to communicate what happened on that day. It appeared in many newspapers, most prominently on the front page of the Boston Globe and Sports Illustrated. It is useful to provide information in a journalistic or historical context, but used as in ad meant to raise money, the photograph is a completely inappropriate choice.

Seeing many countries’ flags lining Boylston Street shrouded in smoke and the faces of runners and spectators overcome with terror is not a scene one should be subjected to walking through downtown Boston every day.

The scene brings back memories of a trying time — hours of an afternoon spent in sheer terror, days spent disoriented and upset, weeks attempting to readjust to living life normally. An image that can evoke emotions like this is not fit for a commercial use displayed on a busy street corner.

While there is no reason to balk at donating to the Boston Police Foundation, there is reason to be angry over their fundraising outreach campaign. It is not okay to use an image that embodies so much of the pain of the marathon as a tool to promote the force or ask for money.

Our city’s police force acted courageously and selflessly on April 15 and the days that followed. We are appreciative and proud of this. But this doesn’t mean that the tragic events of the marathon can be used as part of a fundraising strategy, and especially not in conjunction with provocative image.

The ad serves to remind Bostonians of the pain of the marathon and can actually turn a morning walk to class into an unfortunate trip down memory lane. The Boston Police Foundation should see the flaws in this publicity campaign and take the upsetting ad down.