Come on.. the guy was smart enough to cover so much of his face that you can't recognize him. If many of us have twins "from another mother" (lookalikes) that share an >80% identical facial features, imagine how easy it is to find lookalikes from a picture of only some eyes and almost invisible eyebrows. You could be recorded in a constant face expression different to your natural one (say frowning) and you'd get very different results.
It's quite useless imo to try recognizing the Autozone guy by matching his eyes with someone else's unless there is a VERY close match and you have at least one detail like if the guy really is a disguised cop as many say. A very close match of a police officer could be helpful then, but with the information we currently have.. I'd think it's a waste of time.
Yes, the cop did well to try to hide himself. He likely didn't think someone would get as close to him as they did. And when they did he said "do you want to get arrested?". And when someone screams "Are you a cop?" he responds "does it matter?".
Certainly there is not any "proof" at this point, all speculation. We know that the police will not be investigating this guy. If they were trying to find who it is then that would lend some credibility to the fact that this guy is likely not a cop. But they aren't.
The two points here that would provide the proof would be the guy on twitter who received the girl's text messages getting proof of whom it was and having her verify that it was her and that she knows it was him.
A freedom of information act release of the body camera for Pederson at the time of the window breaking would provide the proof that he was not involved as the police department stated.
There were two quick investigations into this.
The first one being the guy releasing the video, someone took a still of the video to show the guy close up, someone else sees it and sends a text to the girl asking if it was "Jake" (not Jacob as a lazy scammer trying to set someone up would do), this person getting confirmation then posting the text on twitter as a follow up to the picture posted.
Occam's razor puts this as the simplest explanation for those chain of events.
The scam version would be. Guy puts the video up, someone puts up a still picture. Someone else searches to find someone in the St Paul police department that could possibly look like the guy in the close up knowing that if they get a better image their little scam will be destroyed, they come up with some fake text messages coming up with a new story about how those are her gloves, her mask, throws in the nickname of "Jake" on the assumption that this guy goes by the name "Jake" with friends, which would also destroy his scam if people close to the guy verify that nobody calls him that. They then send it to the twitter guy who has many followers and would be able to easily verify the identity of the person sending the text messages.
The second investigation was from the police department. They see some posts about one of their own being outted as the window smasher. They spend about 30 minutes figuring out what to say. They post an announcement that the guy was not Jacob Pederson. End of investigation.