When police in West Virginia’s Monongalia County arrested 20-year-old Wesley Jackson for his alleged involvement in the destruction of automatic license plate readers (ALPRs) deployed by the company Flock Safety, they likely never could have imagined the outpouring of support he would receive from the online community.
In the days after Jackson’s arrest, a post by local news station WDTV gathered over 29,000 comments. As the Washington Post observed, those comments were overwhelmingly positive, with community members and strangers alike singing Jackson’s praises, and concocting a seemingly endless variety of alibis.
To take the community’s word — or words — for it, Jackson couldn’t have been the perpetrator, as he was simultaneously replacing the roof on a homeless shelter, dispensing dogs treats, canoeing, saving puppies from burning buildings, sweeping a parking lot, and rescuing cats from trees at the time the alleged offenses were committed.
“He was actually kissing the homies goodnight at the time of the incident,” one absurdist commenter protested. “Couldn’t have been him.”
Take a look at the comments under any news article or police report about ALPR vandalism, and it’s clear the phenomenon stretches far beyond Monongalia County. It seems the trend is spreading so fast that there doesn’t even necessarily need to be an arrest for John Q Public to lionize privacy minded saboteurs.
Case in point, when police in Winona, Minnesota released a statement claiming that “all eight of our city’s Flock cameras were missing,” the public quickly sprang into action, peppering the department’s page with hundreds of comments in support of the perpetrator, who remains at large. The support was so overwhelming that the department soon shut down comments under the release.
“Whoever you’re suspecting was actually on a fishing trip with me between July 29th and August 1st,” one commenter joked.
“Love seeing the comments on these police releases of flocks being cut down,” remarked another. “It restores some faith in humanity that no one wants to be tracked indefinitely in the name of ‘safety.’”
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