Getting “excited” by “catching people”… The horror of the arrest high that “private arrest YouTubers” get into.

The arrests of illegal, private YouTube users will continue for some time to come.

Masato Mori, 40, a former Lieutenant of Chiba Prefectural Police and a senior consultant for the Japan Association of Criminal Technology, said this.

The authority to make arrests is generally limited to police officers and prosecutors, but private citizens are allowed to make arrests if they are “currently committing a crime or have not completed committing a crime for a short period of time. This is called a private arrest. When a person is arrested, he or she must be handed over to a police officer or other authorities immediately.

In recent years, unrelated persons are unilaterally treated as criminals and unjustly detained under the name of “private arrest. In recent years, some YouTube users have become a social problem by publicizing their arrests and then being arrested themselves.

The line between what constitutes an “active arrest” and what does not is very difficult to draw. For example, in the case of ticket resale, it is important to gather evidence in advance. Even if you go to the scene and see the ticket being handed over, you still need to confirm whether or not the ticket was obtained illegally, whether or not it is something that can be resold, and other acts of confirmation. Even the police usually collect evidence and then obtain an arrest warrant to arrest the person in question. Even though arresting people in the act is not a familiar practice, private arresting YouTube users do it with impunity,” said Mori.

On November 20, the Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department arrested Ren Konno, 30, a private arrest-style YouTuber who runs “Guts Ch” and others on suspicion of violating the Methamphetamine Control Law. The suspects posed as women on a bulletin board, wrote “Bring me methamphetamine,” and fished out a man in his 50s.

When the man appeared, the suspects forced him to go to a police station, pushed him down, and held him while riding on a horse. He handed her over to the police officers who arrived on the scene. Mr. Mori is concerned.

The way he lured the man is something the police would never do. Posing as a woman and posting a message to the effect that you want to use methamphetamines together is an act of seduction, which is prohibited by the police. If a dealer asks you to buy methamphetamine on a bulletin board, you can show the pretense of buying it and catch him, but if you ask him yourself, you will naturally be charged with seduction.

There is also the act of subduing a private arresting YouTube user to call 110 and keep them until the police arrive, but it could be an assault charge.

It is very dangerous to make arrests based on the assumption that ‘they are probably committing a crime’ without having any evidence and without properly seeing the actual crime being committed.”

Why did they film and publish videos of private arrests even if they were committing an illegal act?

It’s about making money. Due to the structure of YouTube, a percentage of the advertising fee is paid to YouTubers based on the number of hits and viewing time. As long as this structure exists, videos posted on YouTube will become more extreme in order to attract viewers, and there will be no end to the number of people who will try to make money even if it means breaking the law. I think it is necessary to review the guidelines on the platform side.

I think we can make an offer. However, we are not in a position to give orders or instructions based on the law. I think the platforms that provide content should establish stricter guidelines, but from the standpoint of the police, I would say that they are not legally binding, so it would be on a ‘request basis. Even if the Japanese subsidiary agrees, there are decisions to be made at the U.S. headquarters, and there are difficulties that require time to reach a consensus,” said Mori.

As long as the structure in which the number of video views is the profit for YouTube users does not change, the second and third generation of YouTube users are likely to emerge. Mr. Mori said, “As far as the police are concerned, we have to crush each and every one of them.

As long as the number of video views remains the same, there will likely be second and third trolls,” Mori said. When the “nuisance YouTubers” became popular, Hezumaryu was arrested and many of the nuisance YouTubers disappeared. It’s a game of tit-for-tat, but as police, if we find something illegal in a video, we will take it down one by one.”

Yet why don’t they stop private arrests? Besides the money they can make, they seem to be on an “arrest high” or “arrest high. Mr. Mori recalls that when he was a police officer and caught a tout in the act of violating the Entertainment Establishments Control Law, “even as a police officer, I was in a state of excitement.

He also recalls that “even as a police officer, I was in a state of excitement when I arrested a customer for violating the Entertainment Establishments Control Law.

Most of the molestation and voyeurism cases were private arrests. In the majority of cases, we caught them because we saw them pointing a camera at the back of the escalator. We would also check the surrounding surveillance cameras, and if there was an image of the voyeur on the suspect’s phone, it was strong evidence and satisfied the requirement for an arrest in the act.

At that time, the person who made the private arrest happened to be there and seemed elated. I could see that he was excited that he had ‘punished the molester’ and ‘saved the victim. They must have been so elated to have caught the culprit that they couldn’t stay calm.

However, it was not about catching him. I just happened to be there and caught him. Under the guise of ‘fixing the world,’ he decided the woman was suspicious just by looking at her, and made an unjustified private arrest without any proof of criminal activity. Trying to gain that excitement is not an acceptable behavior.”

Exposing private individuals on social networking sites without mosaic could be an invasion of privacy, he said. We sincerely hope that the next “nuisance type” or “private person arrest type” will not occur.