You mean the cops. Right?

They're not. Really. You know less about the world than you think you do. Come to Ireland and talk to a cop

I’m curious what the alternative is? I’m not aware of anyone, save you and the aggrieved police, who think this went the wrong way.

This is not remotely true. Furthermore, the way people don’t get away with stuff like this is via extralegal/extrajudicial harassment, abuse, violence, and sometimes assassination (see also: MLK, Huey, Leqaa Kordia, Mahmoud Khalil, Barry Cooper, etc), so we aren’t really sure that he has gotten away with it yet.

He beat a civil defamation suit; these cops still know where he lives. Do you think the events of today made them less angry at him?

Feels like some unfair downvotes, so I'll ask again.

In what other countries could one publicly shame the authorities this severely? I think that's what was meant here.

And yes, it's great.

I'd work the same in pretty much any European country, as in you'd record them, you'd publish that, they'd make up some lame excuse why that's not allowed, it'd go to a court, and a judge would decide who was right case-by-case?

Not quite sure which part of this process do you think is even remotely unique to the US.

He'd probably actually be guilty of something defamation-adjacent in a lot of European countries.

In the US, the plaintiff needs to prove, to a preponderance of evidence, that the statements were false, intended to be perceived as statements of fact, harmful, and that there was negligence or actual malice in the defendant's belief in those statements.

A bunch of European countries allow defamation cases despite the statements being true. Belgium, Finland, France, Germany, Italy, Poland, Sweden, Switzerland, and The U.K definitely fall into that category (though in some cases like the U.K., truth is a defense if the plaintiff can prove the statements were in the public interest).

To people outside of Europe, any category of countries that includes the U.K, France, and Germany can colloquially be referred to as "Europe" pretty comfortably.

100% of those cases would be favorable to cops. Defamation laws are quite restrictive in Europe, much more so when it involves public officials (take a look at the Strafgesetzbuch)

Absolutely not, Germany in general cares more about privacy than any other European country, which of course extends to cops, but you cannot extrapolate anything privacy-related from Germany as a continent-wide rule.

If you really want to generalise across the continent, the most common scenario would be that you're completely within your right to film them and publish that, but then the cops would argue (using GDPR of all things) that you have to blur their faces and names before publishing. (Try to argue != succeeding automatically, that's up to the court to decide.)

Exactly what I meant. For example, in Germany one would have a hard time for much less.