Remember those Vancouver riots from last summer? Remember how the police said they would make use of various social media platforms to track these ruffians down and punish them appropriately? Well, apparently, the social media sting didn’t net the kind of fish the Vancouver police were looking for.

Thanks to a local judge, The Vancouver Sun and The Province have been ordered to hand over all of their Stanley Cup riot photos to the police, but before they complied, the newspapers in question released these same images to the public.

And that’s just what they did.

In fact, the news service released over 5000 photos to the public, but their reservations in doing so remain:

“We will reluctantly turn over the photos and videos to police, but remain concerned that the production order turns journalists into evidence gatherers for police,” said Harold Munro, The Sun’s deputy managing editor.

“Police should only make such demands on the media as a last resort,” he added. “In this case, they have many thousands of photos and videos from the public that are still being reviewed.”

As indicated, the media outlets released “some 5481” images to the public, the same ones they will be turning over to the police. While The Vancouver Sun is complying with the judicial ruling, the newspaper’s legal team asks that pictures with innocent citizens in them be destroyed.

While the chaos of the riots made the topic a popular trend, perhaps the most famous item to come from the Vancouver riots was the image of the couple kissing:

Of course, this kind of image is not what the Vancouver police are looking for, unless they’re wanting to issue a Public Display of Affection citation.

No, these are the kinds of images the police are interested in:

And:

The next question is, how does this kind of ruling make you feel? Should newspapers be compelled to release such images in order to assist with police investigations or should the police, well, find their own damn images? Let us know what you think.