Yep, that's true in real life and it's certainly true on this forum.  You can tell when someone is enjoying his/her power when they act like assholes when exercising it.  I've acted like that a number of times with respect to shitposters, which I used to tag prior to the merit system, but that was just my irritation coming to the surface and not me being a power-hungry DT sadist.  There have been a number of those in the past, though I won't name names.

I tend to agree with you that low-ranked accounts with no merits and a very recent registration date probably shouldn't be tagged simply because it's a waste of time.  On the other hand, if they didn't get tagged they might just keep getting used in perpetuity and in the process they might rank up.  So there's an argument for tagging those noob cheaters, though I don't know if I'd keep bothering with them.

Over the past couple of years I've seen a few new members arrive and start to make a name for themselves by being one of those "forum cops".  If I'm not mistaken, at least one of them turned out to be a cheater himself (but dammit, I forgot his username).  Anyway, that's one of the ways a new member can establish a reputation--whether it's intentional or not, it really doesn't matter as long as they're not looking to become trusted in order to pull off a scam of their own. 

Wanting to be recognized is part of being human, and if someone wants to achieve that by sniffing out bounty cheaters or scammers or whatever, I have no problem with that.