A Michigan vigilante who amassed thousands of social media followers with his unauthorized hunts for pedophiles was shot and killed in a confrontation with two teenagers, police said.
Robert Wayne Lee, 40, of Pontiac, was better known as Boopac Shakur online, where he would often pose as a 15-year-old girl to expose alleged predators.
Authorities say that Lee accused one of the teens at a local restaurant of being a pedophile and punched him—leading one of the boys to pull out a knife and the other to fire a gun. The suspects fled but were later arrested.
The Oakland County Sheriff’s Office noted Lee’s unsanctioned activities—and their uneven results—in a news release about his slaying.
“His one-man crusade has led to the arrest and criminal charges being filed against several men,” it said. “He has also mistakenly identified someone as a sexual predator who was not.”
Videos that Lee posted to Facebook showed him confronting the men he corresponded with while posing as a minor in the style of the show To Catch a Predator.
A GoFundMe to benefit his daughter said Lee “dedicated his life to protecting the innocence of our children from those with malicious intentions. Through his courageous efforts, he successfully exposed 132 predators who sought to harm our community’s youth.”
However, in January, police confirmed just four arrests based on Lee’s videos, according to the Oakland Press. Police had asked Lee to stop his sting operations, but he persisted and even announced classes for others who wanted to follow suit.
Lee denied he was a vigilante. “I’m a concerned citizen,” he told the Press. “A vigilante is doing police work without a badge.”
“I’m just putting the fishing pole in the water and seeing who’s biting,” he added.
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The problem with supporting vigilantism is that vigilantes are wrong a lot and there is no recourse or protection against that.
Cops themselves acknowledge this
“It’s ok if it’s people I don’t like” is not the mindset of an emotionally mature human.
Yeah seriously, actual cops and detectives with actual training, as minimal as it is, get it wrong plenty, imagine how often some jagoff with no training is going to end up attacking an innocent?
Anyone else remember, “we did it Reddit!”
Nah, if you want to help people who are SA victims volunteer at an NGO or become a detective. People like this actively harm investigations and I get the impression that most are just clout chasers.
I’ve never seen a comment that has this much 2013 reddit energy. It’s like looking through a portal.
Fascinating.
Honestly I’ve seen way more braindead teenager logic takes on lemmy than I ever did on reddit.
I’m saying I suspect this is a pedophile going online to fantasize with others about children having sex with adults, who then protects himself afterwards by exposing the person he was talking to while portraying himself as a hero.
It’s like someone with a porn addiction publicly being anti-porn and supporting laws that ban porn as a way of coping.
I would honestly check this guys computers for CSAM.
It’s also important to remember that the majority of child sexual abuse happens between relatives or close family friends with access to children, not random people on the internet. The best way to catch pedophiles remains early grade sexual education in schools, not amateur vigilante undercover sting operation for twitch views.
I think this guy was in the wrong, but it’s a leap to call him a pedo
Can we just stop accusing everyone of being a pedo please
We can safely remove you from the list of Is This Person Secretly Elon?
No it would not be better. I want someone cool and unemotional dealing with high stake situations with complex legal systems. Without that you get into situations like exactly this describes.
“successfully caught” 132 predators…only 4 arrests. Even if every single one of those 132 people were actual pedophiles (I have my doubts), this is clearly a terribly ineffective path.
A lot of the “to catch a predator” guys got off specifically because of how the show handled their being caught. There’s a reason police investigators do things the way they do.
People like to accuse the cancellation of that show being because they accused a judge with influence, but IIRC it’s because someone who wasn’t actually a pedo ended up killing themself because of how destroyed their life was by the show.
Your comment just made me think of something. Think of how ineffective our criminal justice system is. Got it? As bad as it is, it is still greatly exceeds this guy.