My belief is as follows.
Scenario - You walk in on a pervert that was sodomizing your 7 year old son/daughter. If you allow that person to leave your house with breath still in it's body, you never deserved to have your children in the first place and deserve the same penalty as the pervert.
That's how me and my family roll and damn proud of it.
Peace until peace don't work
Asmallvoice
(NB: I am speaking only of the US here.)
You are mixing things up here. Self-defense/defense of other is not the same as reporting of a crime. Which is what the son did.
Finding someone in the act of injuring someone else places you in the shoes of the victim if you react violently. You are usually allowed to use as much violence as necessary to end the attack and not anymore. Think about THAT when your adrenalin is through the roof. You sort of understand how cops can deal the beat down.
If the act could have ended in death then you may have a justifiable killing.
Now having a kid walk in and tell you something even with corroborating evidence you have time and sufficient evidence to call the enforcers. They don't like when you deprive them of a pedo beat down, REALLY they don't. It's much easier for them too since they have the necessary procedures in place to allow them to do the job they were set up for. It's far more efficient when they do it as well.
Otherwise if you do their, very union, job your case ends up in the DA's office on Monday in a staffing conference while they discuss your state of mind just prior. There will be arguments for a pre-meditated rap and that is often how they are filed, without enhancement to save money and a clever ploy to keep you from getting an out of the PD office defender. The DA's stand an even chance with the PD's (they are the same peeps in a way). Then they plead you to murder 2 or if they really feel for you voluntary.
Conversely the cop goes to a shooting board, gets a couple days off with pay and goes back to work.
So there are a couple morals to this.... First call the cops and let them put it on their conscience so you don't carry that scene forever. Let the cops dream about it not you.
The next one is if you are EVER in the criminal justice system NEVER go with a PD (unless you happen to have your own JD). Always hire the big guns. Oh and for a murder rap you are facing an easy 100g for the heavy hitters in LA.
Yeah call the cops.