During my police career, I usually appreciated citizen help. “Usually,” because sometimes people use the police to settle personal scores. In these chaotic times, it appears they’re using the police to settle political scores as well, as PBS revealed in a broadcast transcribed as “How citizen investigators are helping the FBI track down Jan. 6 rioters.” 

Sandy, Citizen Investigator: In the beginning, it was intense. I would drop my children off at school, I would come home, and I would be on it almost like a workday.  And then once the kids were in bed, I was up until 2:00, 3:00, 4:00, and then waking up a couple hours later. It takes its toll, definitely.

Judy Woodruff: Sandy, like many Americans, was paying close attention January 6, 2021.  As an angry mob of then-President Donald Trump supporters violently broke through police lines and stormed the Capitol Building.

Sandy: And I just remember hearing, "Shots have been fired," and I don't think I will ever forget that moment in my life.

Image: the Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes. Wikimedia Commons.org.

Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 Generic.

The only shot fired that day was by Michael Byrd, a Capital Police Lieutenant, who killed Army Veteran Ashley Babbitt. He has never been charged, but has been promoted.

Judy Woodruff: In the following days, Sandy, not her real name, joined a massive citizen effort to identify the individuals who broke into the Capitol. She's been directly responsible for helping to put people behind bars, and she now has to hide her identity, for fear of retaliation.

Sandy is today part of an informal community of dozens of ordinary Americans who came to be known as sedition hunters. Over time, they developed their own methodologies, guidelines, even a software application to keep track of every individual rioter, giving each one a pseudonym and compiling dossiers of evidence that they then turned over to the Federal Bureau of Investigation, along with the rioters' real identity.

The article goes on to bemoan the approaching statute of limitations. Thereafter, people who were invited in, and escorted by, Capital Police might go unpunished! And all is not well in snitch land:

Ryan Reilly [NBC reporter]: We do have a lot of people within the FBI who are not so enthusiastic about bringing these cases against people who attacked the Capitol on January 6.

Judy Woodruff: Are there still people in the FBI not enthusiastic?

Ryan Reilly: There are, and I say that because some of these individuals who were at the FBI have come out and said that publicly. They have resigned from the FBI because of these cases.

How tragic—for justice. It’s cases like this that help the FBI weed out honest line agents, people who won’t arrest Americans for spending a few minutes in the Capital taking in the sights and taking selfies. They have the odd notion that unless people are reasonably notified they’re trespassing, it’s bad form to arrest them. It’s even worse form to make up crimes and keep them for years in medieval dungeon-like pre-trial detention. Arrest actual rioters, and those that assaulted police officers, to be sure. I wonder how many FBI agents and plants the FBI has had to weed out of citizen dossiers?  “Thanks for the tip, citizen investigator Sandy.  We’ll apprehend this (stifled laughter) insurrectionist!”

Poor citizen investigator Sandy is sacrificing for us all:

Judy Woodruff: Sandy has seen the effects of disinformation firsthand in her own family.

Sandy: I haven't spoken to a few of my cousins since January 6 because they support it. We're divided, and I don't know how to pull us back together. I don't know how it's going to change.

I suspect what Sandy’s relatives support is free speech, including the right to demand accountability for potentially fraudulent elections.  Governmental abuse of police power for political gain, not so much.

“Sandy” inadvertently identifies the primary danger in using “citizen investigators:” one can never know their motives. Worse, they invariably divide the public and damage respect for law enforcement. It’s one thing to follow up on a tip from a citizen who witnessed a crime or knows someone who committed one. It’s another to engage in a political witch hunt.

In the case of Jan. 6, the FBI has tacitly acknowledged FBI agents and/or informants were in the crowd, but have refused to provide their numbers or actions. Recent revelations of FBI entrapment schemes lead the reasonable American to doubt the legitimacy of many, perhaps most, Jan. 6 arrests. This is particularly true due to the narrative of an insurrection that wasn’t.

The FBI has always identified itself as a felony agency. Chasing misdemeanors is beneath them, a waste of time and investigative resources when there are kidnappers, foreign terrorists and spies to catch. With the manipulation of “citizen investigators,” it would appear the FBI has considerably lowered its sights.

Mike McDaniel is a USAF veteran, classically trained musician, Japanese and European fencer, life-long athlete, firearm instructor and retired police officer and high school and college English teacher.  His home blog is Stately McDaniel Manor.