Last Thursday night, a gay couple was brutally beaten by a group of two men and six women who were “visibly intoxicated.” NBC Philadelphia reports, “Witnesses say someone in the group asked, 'Is this your f****** boyfriend?' When one of the victims told them yes, the group allegedly attacked them, punching and kicking them in the face, head and chest.” One of the attackers grabbed a victim's bag and fled. At least one of the victims was taken to the hospital for fractures to his face and had to have his jaw wired shut.

Generally after an attack of this kind, the investigation can draw out indefinitely. The Philadelphia Police Department said it was looking for as many as 12 people in relation to the attack.

But today Philadelphia's ABC News syndicate reported that some of the suspects are expected to surrender to police in the near future.

Why the sudden change of heart? A number of good actors on various social media used Twitter, Facebook, and some CCTV footage to track down the attackers and alert police of their possible identities.

When the Philadelphia police released grainy CCTV footage of the group of attackers on YouTube on Tuesday, Greg Bennett, a former Real Housewives of New Jersey star, tweeted the video with the message, “Video of the 10-12 pieces of garbage suspected of a gay bashing in Philly. Spread it round.” Bennett, who has hundreds of thousands of followers, received a photo from one of his followers of a group of people at a restaurant in the area who looked similar to the people in the CCTV video.

At that point, a Twitter user called @FanSince09 retweeted the image from the restaurant and discovered that the restaurant was called La Viola. The Twitter user then went to Facebook to find out who had checked into La Viola on Twitter on Thursday night and found at least three people who checked into the restaurant and whose faces seemed to match those in the CCTV video.

@FanSince09 reportedly took that information to the police, and Philadelphia Detective Joseph Murray tweeted this morning, “S/O to @FanSince09 This is what makes my job easy. Sure, it's up to me to make the arrest but we are all in this together.”

Since then, sources have told various news outlets that the people in the photo were former students of a local Catholic high school who were in town for a dinner. NBC Philadelphia said that some of the suspects have lawyered up and told the police department they would surrender today, but they have kept the department waiting, and officers were considering going to the suspects' homes to make the arrests.

Use of CCTV footage has often been highly controversial. In the UK, privacy groups balked at widespread CCTV use, which was later shown to not have much of an impact on crime prevention. But occasionally good can come of the ever-watching eye. Earlier this year, a Wisconsin woman was cleared of responsibility in a car crash with a Milwaukee County Sheriff's Office Deputy when CCTV footage was discovered that showed that the Deputy was responsible for the crash.

Still, using the hive mind to solve crimes and mysteries doesn't always have a happy ending. In the wake of the Boston bombings last year, amateur investigators on reddit accused several innocent people of being the perpetrators, and the site manager, Erik Martin, issued a public apology for "online witch hunts and dangerous speculation."

It's still unclear whether suspects will be arrested and charged—as Detective Murray tweeted today, “Let's be clear here. No arrests made. Central Detectives have done a ton of work and have a lot more to do. (Not a Law & Order episode)”. But it is clear that social media contributed to speeding up the process of justice.