Remember when Redditors tracked down the Boston Marathon Bomber? They convinced a whole bunch of people a random guy was a terrorist. Even if the person is guilty, police don’t want lynch mobs trying to track down criminals to deliver vigilante justice.

The officer’s request is reasonable. If you film someone committing a crime, give the evidence to police. They’re the ones who will investigate and charge the suspect who will have their chance to defend themselves in court and have a judge decide on punishment. Posting videos and photos online isn’t how to go about it.

Something similar happened in my own city. Someone spraypainted a war memorial and the local newspaper posted a story about it. A whole bunch of people in the comments got fired up over it. Local police spent more time investigating the grown adults who posted death threats online than catching the teenager who did it. There’s a reason why courts issue punishments and not the comment section.

No idea if it’s similar to our situation, but here in Flanders it’s illegal to post images of people in the act of committing a crime, since they get the same identity protections as anyone else (innocent until officially convicted etc). So that means we’ve had several situations where store owners who were robbed still posted the images, hoping to recoup some losses or find the perpetrators, only to have to pay fines on top of their losses because they “broke the law” by outing thieves.

Don’t even think about trying to defend yourself or your possessions, though; any force used MUST be in proportion to the threat. That means you HAVE to let people who’ve robbed you, and are no longer actively threatening you, go. Several people (mostly jewellers) are in prison because they unloaded a hunting rifle into the backs of fleeing thieves.

Personally, I think there should be some kind of golden middle road between the EU/Canada and USA situations…