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.
There is something so weird about this. I don’t think these guys are trying to protect children, I think they are getting off on the roleplaying and using the ‘hunting predators’ thing as an excuse to justify it.
And teens he confronted killed him? He typically posed as a 15 year old girl to catch people it says. I guess these teens are in the wrong if they’re 18-19? Story just seems a little strange.
Confronting people by yourself is not something a level headed individual does. This guy was clearly getting off on some type of vigilante hero complex.
Low hanging fruit. There’s not that many actual pedophiles out there, and the ones that exist are usually pretty cautious (otherwise they’d have been caught already).
But technically an 18 year old wanting to have sex with a 16 year old…
I don’t know anything about this guy, but the fact that he was accusing teenagers of being pedophiles suggests he was just trying to get fame and attention by capitalizing on the current “pedophiles everywhere” moral panic.
Is highly dependent on local laws. Some outlaw it, some are perfectly fine with it, and some fall into a gray area between. For instance, it may be a minor offense (no pun intended, I swear) instead of a major offense if there were a greater age gap. These are sometimes known as “Romeo and Juliet” laws
Romeo and Juliet laws are not a defense or protection from prosecution. They generally only apply after a conviction and generally they just prevent one person from being labeled as a sex offender if specific conditions are met. The application and conditions vary depending on location.
I think you might be lost, friendo
We were talking about pedophiles, not pedantry
These kids weren’t wrong no matter what though. They were attracted to an adult man in women’s clothing. Unless he was somehow broadcasting the fake age, they weren’t attracted to a 15 year old girl. They were attracted to an adult man who thought he looked like a 15 year old girl.
I’m not familiar with this guy’s technique. How did he go about baiting potential targets?
The usual methods of the past used text and staged images, so the targets didn’t see the real person until a meetup. I’d suppose though that with the advancements in live video filters over the past several years there’s no reason this guy couldn’t just dress in drag and apply appropriate filters so he appears as required.
Yeah, I was thinking this was all in person, hence why he may accidentally end up targeting teenagers. It probably was online and they didn’t see the person until the meeting. This man has to be super dumb to go after other teenagers, let alone putting himself in this position without other support structures and things to protect him.
It’s literally for money. He makes a living from the amount of views it gets.
*he made a living
*because he ain’t living
See also the ammosexuals who fantasize on the daily about the day they get to “defend themselves” against a “home intruder”
The hero complex is IMO just the masking of sociopathic violent fantasies in self righteousness. “No no no, I’m not obsessed with being able to kill justifiably, I just REALLY hate pedos!”
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I see your point, and agree with it. I’m sure a lot of it do it for the fame and it’s not really about protecting the kids to them.
But, even if they’re doing it for their own self-interest, they’re still doing a good thing. You don’t have to have good intentions to still promote positive change. I couldn’t care less for the guilty people they find, good riddance, they don’t belong in society.
That being said, if they falsely accuse people to try and keep growing their influence, then it becomes a problem
Are they? Teenagers attracted to teenagers is wrong now?
Depending on the age difference, yes.
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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’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?
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.
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.
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.
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.