> 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.
I agree with you that there's a huge gap between the intended legal system and the actual legal system, but even those officers who plant evidence will give at least lip service to the "innocent until proven guilty" framework.
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).
“The purpose of this tweet was to find out the officer’s information, to hold him accountable.”
That can be construed as vigilantism.