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.
But technically an 18 year old wanting to have sex with a 16 year old…
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
even if they’re doing it for their own self-interest, they’re still doing a good thing
Are they? Teenagers attracted to teenagers is wrong now?
Depending on the age difference, yes.
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Would it not be the best case scenario to have the people who have an impulse to hunt people, be hunting people who are pedophiles?
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
"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.”
“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’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.
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?
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.
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.
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.
While they managed to catch 4 people, out of a total of 132 people that doesn’t sound very good, and might have even made it harder for the police to catch these people. One of them was found to be innocent, what if more of them were?
I really don’t understand the boner so many Americans seem to have for vigilantism
Just fix your goddamn police system - there’s a reason why vigilantism is outlawed since it’s too easy to misjudge or misidentify stuff and the consequences are horrible - let professionals do their job properly
Oh sure, lemme just fix the police system real quick. Give me a minute. I don’t know why nobody thought of that!
Well shit if only we’d known all we had to do was fix it quick!
Silly us!
That’s it? Just fix the police system?? Whoa, why didn’t we think of doing this sooner?!
Why don’t I just strap on my fix the police system helmet and hop in the fix the police system cannon and fire myself into fix the police system town where police reform grows on trees?
Just fix your goddamn police system - there’s a reason why vigilantism is outlawed since it’s too easy to misjudge or misidentify stuff and the consequences are horrible - let professionals do their job properly
We’ve tried that, but the problem is they can’t seem to do it without executing people, and/or the neighbor’s dog, for fun.
Listen, in order to reduce crime in America, sometimes a bunch of innocent dogs, people in wheelchairs, children playing with toys, and people getting health checks have to die.
If we just kill everyone, there will be no more criminals. Flawless logic.
Don’t forget flash banging infants in cribs sometimes they need to follow up with a bullet through the neck
I think that’s just it right there. Our police system is completely broken and for-profit. People want justice. So out of desperation they’re seeking it themselves.
While we do have a problem with vigilantes deciding that their contribution is vitally necessary to keep things running (see: Kyle Rittenhouse), I’m not really sure this qualifies as vigilantism in support of the law or even to protect kids from predators. Honestly, this just strikes me as yet another wannabe influencer/YT ‘star’, only instead of ‘restoring’ old items, cleaning cars/yards/houses, edging over weird ‘recipes’, or popping pimples, this guy’s schtick was ‘going after pedophiles’.
Fixing the police is great but I don’t think that’s enough to reduce child rape.
Find the causes—childhood abuse / neglect, most likely—and aggressively address these social ills. Find more reliable ways to rehabilitate and use it for those convicted. Among other things.
I think part of it has something to do with the popularity of superhero movies like Batman and such. Honestly I think having the world’s biggest movie production system has been a net negative for Americans and humanity as a whole.
The US also has very much of a “cowboy” self image
Cowboy justice in movies is kind of a semi whitewashed version of lynching.
Alan Moore, who wrote Watchmen, was trying to make this point through his media, but he also explicitly stated it in interviews. He was like, “Y’all do realize that superhero stuff is fascist power fantasy, right? You shouldn’t like this stuff as an adult.”
Love his work as Rasputin impersonator.
I don’t believe Moore ever said “y’all”
I think the cause is the other way around. We had vigilantes long before Batman. Cowboy movies weren’t making this stuff up.
Cowboy movies made a LOT of shit up. The Wild West was not full of gunfights
I mean, you can visit the OK Corral and see where the bullets are lodged in the walls anytime you’d like.
Yep. That’'s one.
Point is any old Western with a shootout is more likely to be totally false than even partially true.
I remember reading somewhere that the “Old West” actually had pretty strict gun control.
Iirc, the usual practice was to turn in your guns to the sheriff as soon as you got to town. You had to have a license or some official form stating you had the right to carry your gun with you, but it was still limited to basically just LEOs.
Vigilantism is not a modern invention. I am sorry not all movies are arthouse and that makes you sad.
Just fix your goddamn police system
Policing doesn’t prevent crimes.
And it was never really intended to.
Vigilantism also doesn’t - what’s your point?
I never suggested that it did.
I went through a period where I binge watched a bunch of episodes of that show, but I read that it was difficult to convict some of the people they caught because adults posing as children to lure people into getting arrested is considered entrapment or something. Therefore, their method of catching them could be considered unlawful, leading to the case being thrown out.
Actual police has better stats than this dude, and police is garbage
Maybe punching a suspected pedophile is not the best way to bring them to justice?
Maybe punching a suspected pedophile is not the best way to bring them to justice?
Especially when he has accused innocent people in the past.
That was my first thought. I can only imagine he wasn’t able to control his anger in the moment. I’m sure he saw himself as doing important work. It’s sad that a child is going to grow up without a father now.
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punching an innocent kid while falsely accusing them of being a pedophile and being shot in response though does have the ring of poetic justice…
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How do you figure?
In what way will a punch prevent a child rapist from wrecking the lives of more children?
Will it somehow cause them to stop? Will it cause them to face charges for their crimes? Lead to therapy in hopes of reform?
I don’t see how a punch is likely to do any of these things.
Anything resulting in their arrest and conviction? Great. Do that.
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he would often pose as a 15-year-old girl
Authorities say that Lee accused one of the teens at a local restaurant of being a pedophile
Let that sink in.
He accused a teen interested in an age-appropriate partner of being a pedophile. The age difference between the people that killed Lee, and the ‘victim’ Lee was pretending to be online is, at most, 4 years.
Fuck that dude. That kind of accusation wrecks lives.
And as an adult man posing as a young girl, how can you possibly pose as specifically 15? Do you wear a sign with your age? I would bet he looked much older than 15. He probably looked older than these teens, because he was older than them. I don’t understand how you can be called a pedophile by being attracted to an adult man in women’s clothing unless he’s broadcasting his fake age somehow.
“hi my name is Sally I’m 15 years old and I’m a huge Swiftie!”
…like that.
You know, I just realized it was probably online and he only got shot after trying to get them to meet in person. I was thinking posing as a 15 year old girl meant in person and that’s when the attack happened. How stupid does this guy need to be to do this to other teenagers online?
Don’t most states have Romeo and Juliet laws that specifically say a 19 year old wanting to date a 15 year old is acceptable? Maybe it’s only a 3 year gap or something. IANAL.
AFAIK if the relationship started BEFORE one of them turned 17? or 18? then they are protected. So a 16 y/o dating a 14 y/o would be protected if they are still together when they are 18 and 16. Something like that.
Before anyone asks there was a scene in the Mark Wahlberg transformer movie where a kid had the law lamentated in a card in his wallet so he could pull it out and explain to Mark that he is legally allowed to fuck his underage daughter… so I had to look up wtf that was about.
Dude accuded aTEEN for being a pedo.
What???
Why were they charged? Sounds like a pretty obvious case of self defense.
If you have to use any kind of deadly force in self defense, it is always in your best interest to be the first one on the phone with 911. Police aren’t known for their critical thinking, so the first story they get is most often they one they are going with until proven otherwise.
If one of the teens had called 911 and said some creepy guy catfished and physically assaulted them first, this story would probably read a lot differently.
Disclaimer: Not victim blaming. More of a PSA. And really one of the very very few times I would recommend calling the police.
Probably a magnitude of force issue. If they didn’t legitimately fear for their life, then deadly force in response would be a crime.
Magnitude of force of a 40yo vs. a teen makes the self defense acceptable imo
“He has also mistakenly identified someone as a sexual predator who was not.”
You can feel the shrug as the policeman makes this statement.
This guy is a product of American society. This type of entrapment is considered to be a legitimate tactic. A place where becoming a stooge diminishes your sentencing. Somewhere rich white people get a completely different version of justice to poor black people.
