The most WTF part for me is the summons and the court case identifies the police officer and he would likely to get more visibility and negative coverage than the original tweet which was retweeted by grand total of 4 people. Streisand effect anyone?

Your statement makes sense, but only if the officer actually feared for his life by being identified.

What if the purpose of the charges is retribution, not to protect the officer and his family?

Officer photo here: http://archive.vn/qySKX

So I assume that protestors wanted him identified because 1) he was abusive, and 2) he didn't have any fully visible identifying badge number - which if there was then arguably these citizen journalists could simply make a police report via official route instead of depending on public crowdsourcing?

Sometimes it feels like the culture of American policing and criminal justice is so broken that we just need to start over from scratch.

Here's an explanation for non-US readers, or US readers who don't understand how police are integrated into the judicial system.

The defunding movement hasn't been well-explained in the press, but the actual core reality is that police unions need to be removed, and to remove the police unions, you have to start over with new police forces.

There's 4 problems that need to be solved first though:

1) After you start over, how do you prevent a new union forming?

2) In the USA, District Attorneys (DA's), etc. are elected. To get elected, police union support at election time is needed/helpful.

3) How do you move existing court cases ahead after you fire the arresting officers?

4) Even though police officers often have misconduct, the DA needs their testimony to be believable for cases. So the misconduct is generally suppressed from public view.

As you can see, the dependency of DA's on police officers alone makes this issue very difficult to solve, and when combined with unlimited legal aid from police unions is insurmountable.

Canada, which operates quite differently than the US (DA's are appointed), also has a problem with police unions stonewalling investigations. The officers involved just remain silent and lawyer up, the same as the US.

That person needs to learn not to speak without a lawyer:

“The purpose of this tweet was to find out the officer’s information, to hold him accountable.”

That can be construed as vigilantism.

Holding police accountable is not vigilantism.

The right to photograph cops at work in the US is well established. Cops don't like that, but they lose in court on that.[1]

[1] https://www.aclu.org/know-your-rights/protesters-rights/#i-w...

Proving your right in court can cost you everything.

Ah yes, the "guilty until proven innocent" framework. I don't know about New Jersey, but the rest of the USA doesn't do it that way for criminal law.

That said, I completely agree that defending yourself against a criminal charge in the USA is far too expensive.

> I don't know about New Jersey, but the rest of the USA doesn't do it that way for criminal law.

Do you not read the newspaper? People plea out to drug possession when there is video evidence of police planting it, because they can't afford bail and will lose their job and home if they spend 3 months in jail fighting the charge.

Do you have experience in the US court as a defendant? Tort or criminal

I 100% agree with you. I wrote that because that's not what the prosecutor is going to say in court which is why she needs a lawyer since she is in legal trouble.

You can't file a police report against an officer ("holding them accountable") if all you have is a partially covered face, no badge ID, no car ID, and don't know which department/organization. Asking for help identifying an officer is not, in and of itself, vigilantism.

It's possible there were intentions of "cyber harassment" (I've never seen that as a legal statute so who knows what the burden of proof is), but I highly doubt simply a retweet is sufficient to prove according to US legal standards. The original message might, but this is dangerously close to the "hate speech" type of standard they have in Europe which is very different from the speech protections we have in the USA.

I would argue this lawsuit is baseless (unless there is other, as yet unknown, evidence) and I interpret it to be financial harassment by the officer of a protester which he very likely politically disagrees (based on the "blue line" flag).

Doxxing is bad, and that’s exactly what this person was trying to do. Just because it wasn’t successful, doesn’t mean it wasn’t harassment.

Additionally, that article makes it very unclear what, if anything, the officer did to warrant being identified. He performed his duties, while wearing a face mask (which everyone is encouraged to do now) which had a pattern some people don’t like.

> what, if anything, the officer did to warrant being identified

I'm no expert on US policing but aren't they supposed to be identifiable in the general course of their duties? e.g. NYC mandates visible name plates and that officers identify themselves in interactions.

Accountability is not a bad thing and anyone who wields the power of the state needs to be easily identified by journalists, etc.

Asking for the name of a public employee is doxxing?

Can you explain why asking to identify a police officer performing official duties should be illegal?

"If anyone knows who this bitch is throw his info under this tweet" - this is not trying to identify an officer. This was a tweet that was designed to inflame people.

They could have taken the picture to their local police station and made a complaint. They could have sent it to a newspaper. They could have tweeted "This officer is unidentified at a rally." They didn't.