Hingham, Massachusetts is located on the south side of Boston right next to the bay. While the town is away from the urban center, the residents there haven’t entirely escaped their share of the current unrest that surrounds the Black Lives Matter protests and riots engulfing the country of late. In a perhaps less notable example of this phenomenon’s influence on suburbia, police were recently forced to track down two 18-year-old men who stole and defaced a Blue Lives Matter flag from one homeowner’s property. Given everything else the cops have on their plates these days, you might think it would be a miracle that they would have the time to look into something as comparatively trivial as this, to say nothing of cracking the case. But their job was clearly made easier because the vandals decided to film their activities and post them on social media where an alert neighbor spotted them. (CBS Boston)

Two 18-year-old Hingham men are charged with stealing and defacing a “thin blue line” flag from a home. The two allegedly posted video of the act on social media.

Hingham Police received an anonymous tip about a flag pole and flag that had been stolen on August 15. The person providing the tip also included videos from social media that showed the pole being smashed and placed into a pool.

Police said another video showed one of the men ripping a thin blue line bumper sticker from the window of a car parked at the Derby Street Shoppes in town.

Sadly, the video was taken down before anyone could release a copy to the media and the names of the two men were not provided because they were issued a summons to appear without being arrested. But the following clip from the local CBS News outlet shows us the scene of the crime and provides some background to the story.

Is this becoming a new trend among the rioters and other vandals? I’m talking about this compulsion to film yourself breaking the law and either stream the activities live to your followers or post the video later on your YouTube account.

Remember that it was only recently when we found out a young woman from Chicago had live-streamed herself looting multiple stores on the Miracle Mile. The Chicago PD was quickly able to locate her after that and she’s currently awaiting her court date. (Assuming she shows up.)

More examples abound. Going back a couple of months, in the earlier days of the rioting and looting in Chicago (when there was still more stuff left to be looted) an Adidas store in the Windy City was cleaned out in record time. Not only did someone catch the fleeing thieves on video, but multiple other individuals were filming the entire affair as well. And nobody seemed to care in the least that they were being recorded.

There’s plenty more of this material out there. You can watch looters emptying out a Target in Minneapolis. Many aren’t even bothering to wear masks. I suppose we should be thankful in some small way that these idiots are making the job of the police that much easier. But when there is so much looting going on night after night, how will the police find the time to locate and charge them all? How long would it take to process them all through the courts? Perhaps that’s what the rioters are counting on. With enough numbers, they can overwhelm the system and the rule of law will be effectively shut down.