But we have laws against vigilantism for a reason -- several reasons, actually. For one thing, Carrasquillo is still officially just the "person of interest" in the case, and there's always still the chance that he's not even the guy. What's more, there is the chance that the angry mob could have mistaken someone innocent for Carrasquillo and then assaulted the wrong guy, or worse. (Indeed, Giordano said there were reports that such a thing did happen yesterday -- if that's correct then I'll update the post.) There's a lot of reasons why we expect people in authority -- the alleged grown-ups -- to oppose citizens taking the law into their own hands.