It just means we're catching the stupid ones
That is a really dangerous move and doesn't really line up with my experiences. This woman was pretty stupid. She's not a criminal though, she's a massage therapist.
She may not be a career criminal but after she torched a police car she's at least an amateur.
1. This person is not a criminal in some particular all-encompassing sense of the word. I.e., some people commit one-off crimes of passion while others make a lifestyle/career out of crime. Presuming that the latter are stupid because the former are stupid is dangerous because organized criminals have learned good internet op-sec. That's interesting.
2. Thinking of people who commit crimes as "criminals" and making blanket assumptions about the criminal element is a mistake. That might be a well-trodden critique, but it's interesting enough that there have been some (quite influential) books written around the topic. This seems like the more likely intent. Thinking about how the social phenomena induced by the internet and social media interact with those 20th century ideas about identity and subjectivity might result in an interesting conversation. E.g., suppose torching a cop car was an act of passion and this person's name is now forever associated with a crime of passion. That seems... new and different... relative to 30 years ago. Back then, you could just move somewhere new where no one knew your past; as long as you didn't become a criminal in that new place, you could basically start over. What might be the societal implications of continuing to assign "criminal" as a dominant identity in the age of an internet that never forgets?
3. hoorayimhelping believes that there is no law in the US which prohibits the torching of cop cars.
The first two are charitable interpretations that might result in curiosity-driven conversation (in which you may or may not want to participate). The third.... isn't so charitable and is unlikely to go anywhere.
"various videos captured her wearing protective goggles and gloves, taking a flaming piece of wooden police barricade from the rear window of the sedan that was already on fire, and then shoving the flaming wood into the SUV that was not on fire."
Having protective goggles and gloves?
Legitimate question: What's your definition of a criminal?
There is a lack of accountability and people look for reasons to escape it, not embrace it.
The defense attorney could try the "Infectious toxic encephalopathy" gambit .
You are right to point out that we usually use the noun "criminal" more to refer to someone that makes a habit of crime or makes their living from crime.
And I'll also add that the word "criminal" is often used to imply someone is subhuman. Possibly subconsciously, but it's common to see people outraged by police brutality only if they think an innocent person is the victim. Things like "no innocent person should be treated that way." I think this is the primary objective of the ever-present ad-hominem attacks such as "well he was no angel."
The extraordinary permanence of certain aspects of identity ("criminal", "felon", "rapist", "racist", etc.) in the information age is radically different from how identity has worked for the past 100 years or so. The possibility of "starting over" is gone.