Russ Dillingham? Yeah, I know Russ Dillingham. I’ve always stood in awe of the man. I remember watching with timid fascination as he drove nails into lumber with his fists, or hauled an engine out of a car with gritted teeth and brute strength.

Know him? Yeah, I know him. So I was not surprised when he flung his camera to the ground and jumped in to wrestle a fleeing suspect to the ground. What surprised me is that the hulking shutterbug didn’t uproot a tree and use it to subdue the runaway crook.

Russ Dillingham is not afraid of the dark. The dark is afraid of Russ Dillingham.

It was my honor to write about the photographer’s heroics in tackling the fleet-footed suspect who soared from a third-floor porch and tried to bound away like a damn squirrel. But ever since I wrote the story, I’ve been approached with the same nagging question.

Should journalists step into the action they were sent to cover, putting themselves and possibly others in peril? Or should they remain like the cameramen on the wildlife shows, absolutely objective and uninvolved?

The short answer is this: I don’t watch the wildlife shows anymore. Because when I do, I always end up screaming at the television, demanding that the cold-hearted crew give the dying meerkat a damn sandwich, for God’s sake. Or maybe blow your horn once or twice to scare the panther away from the injured gazelle. Heartless wretches.

The less hysterical answer is this: When Russ tossed his camera aside and jumped in to capture the lithe fugitive, he was not acting as a journalist. For that span of seconds, he took off his photographer’s hat and acted as a citizen concerned about the welfare of others.

Somewhere around 99.9 percent of the time, a reporter or photographer would not be required to make that descent from the professional world to the personal one. We take our shots, get our comments and relay the action to the reader in omnipotent style. We don’t fudge the circumstances to meet our needs, we don’t exert any influence on the drama as it is played out. That code of conduct works well, as it has for hundreds of years.

But I invite you to ask yourself if you want your newspeople to be so apart from the world they cover that they stand aloof, no matter what. Does anyone want their local reporter to keep a distance, scribbling in a notebook as some meth-head pummels and robs an elderly person? Or abducts a child?

You, troubled reader, would expect your mailman, your welder, oil man or street mime to come to the aid of others if no one else was available to do so. And those people might be less equipped to help out than the towering Russ Dillingham, with his python arms.

He has been working in this business, largely on downtown streets, for 25 years. I trust his discretion in matters such as this, and I suspect the people who sign his paychecks do, as well. I don’t expect you’ll find Russ cruising the streets with a blue bubble bought at Marden’s on the dashboard and a cape upon his back.

Journalists can enjoy 50-year careers without ever being asked or expected to jump into the fray. But in the unpredictable world of breaking news, the need to make that kind of decision can be upon you with the surprise and speed of a man springing from a roof.

No journalist I work with entertains lofty fantasies about becoming an on-the-job vigilante. In spite of popular misconception, we are not flunked-out cops who always wanted to battle crime but settled for news reporting.

Muscle-bulging Russ Dillingham is a great newsman who takes unbelievable photographs. He is also a father and a human being with a complex set of scruples and ideals clustered somewhere in his bulbous head. When asked to help out, it was not the instincts of a journalist that fired in his brain, but the instincts of a person with a clear sense of responsibility and duty to his neighbors.

Questioning his deed too vigorously diminishes the comforting fact that sometimes good people do good things.

Mark LaFlamme is the Sun Journal crime reporter.