Sting operations do not make anyone into a law breaker; they merely replace the genuine law-breaker-facilitator with one that is more likely to cooperate with police invesitigations. So, when an actual law breaker proceeds to go and actually break the law, the police have a much easier time proving it, given that they actually caught them in the act.
This is, of course, a more sneaky and devious method of catching criminals than following them around looking at their footprints through a magnifying glass - but it’s also more effective. If your issue is that you don’t think these people should be arrested at all, then you should rightly be complaining about the laws rather than complaining that the police are begin effective at their jobs. It’s not really much better for the police to be spending time trying and failing to catch your preferred outlaws, after all.
First, police do have some discretion as to which laws they enforce, the higher up on the legal food chain the charge is, the less discretion.
Second, stings are technically legit, yes. Taking great care to avoid entrapment, stings have worked out quite well to the benefit of society.
Sure, they get a lot of small fish in the wide net, but some big ones too. Some of my favorites are the ones that bring the warrant felons out of the woodwork with offers of free sports tickets or TV’s or whatever.
Not to mention that it saves time, lives and resources.
I don’t think police should be in the business of catching potential lawbreakers, they should be catching actual lawbreakers. Of course, some people will say that if the police sell you some drugs or a blowjob, you are actually breaking the law. But why aren’t the police breaking the law by contracting to sell drugs and/or blowjobs? They might say you would have bought drugs otherwise, but you wouldn’t have bought those drugs at that time if the police weren’t there coaxing you into it.
That’s like pushing somebody’s buttons until they are in a murderous rage so you can arrest them for attempted murder. “Somebody else would have pushed those buttons eventually; we might as well arrest them now before they kill somebody.” It is unethical, even without considering the ethical legitimacy of the laws themselves.
A sting operation is merely presenting potential criminals the option to turn themselves into the police. It saves time, money, and pretty much ensures conviction.
Can anyone elucidate the difference between a sting and entrapment? In my mind, if a cop is wearing scanty clothing on the street but otherwise minding their own business, and a John drives up and asks them what services they provide, that’s fine, but if the cop is the one asking Johns if they want a good time that’s entrapment. Likewise if a hippie looking cop in a trenchcoat is hanging out in a park and someone asks if they have any weed that’s fine, but if the cop asks passerbys if they want any weed, that’s entrapment.
That’s ignoring of course the issue of the absurdity of consensual crimes. Yes, it’s mostly a legislation issue, but there’s a huge influence factor involved in how things are enforced. There’s a lot of, for lack of a better term, “dick moves” on the part of police departments. Their time, our tax money, the supposed ‘perpetrators’ and supposed ‘victims’ would all be better served by a helping approach rather than a punitive one.
I’ve said it before in other threads, but nobody seems to agree. I understand that just because there are serious crimes going on that you don’t completely disregard small crimes, but the police seem to go after these small crimes because of the visibility of the effort.
If you have a child, you want to be a parent in every respect. You want to make sure they brush their teeth at night all the way up to not committing mass genocide.
So, if you have a kid with who murders his classmates, you tend to not focus so much on the teeth brushing. Likewise, cops in an area like South Florida with its murder and property crime should NOT be primarily focused on traffic crimes, prostitution vice, and misdemeanor drug busts.
They do so for the revenue that these crimes bring in. Now, people say that it isn’t so, but one of the things that was done this past year to increase revenue (the Gov. even conceded that this was true) was to raise traffic fines and take away the reduced fines for attending traffic school.
That is the problem I have. They go on TV and tell you to make sure to lock your car and not leave valuables in it. Hey guys, isn’t it your fucking jobs to get the people who would break into my car off the street?
Lack of funding, lack of manpower, blah, blah, blah, but that doesn’t keep I-95 from looking like a police car parking lot on the shoulder. They have plenty of resources for that. I understand that this isn’t the fault of Joe Beat Cop, but I completely agree with the posters who complain about enforcement of petty laws.
I disagree with the mantra that we have to “talk to our legislators and not the cops”. There are laws on the book against adultery and fornication that the cops seem to use their discretion in not enforcing, but there isn’t any money in those…
And those people would be absolutely right. So perhaps rather than “some people will say” you might acknowledge that this in, in fact, an accurate statement of the law.
Because they don’t have any criminal intent. A crime requires both the intent to commit the crime, and an actual act. If the act is ineffectual, then typically we have a crime of “attempt.” An act that does effect the crime completes the actual crime. So when the police sell you crack and you buy it, you’ve completed the crime of possession of a controlled substance. If you offer the police money for a blowjob, you’ve completed the crime of solitication, even though no actual blowjob ensues.
The usual evidence is that if you’re wandering arounf an area known for drug sales, and approaching someone who appears to be a drug seller, then you WOULD have bought drugs at that time. There’s no “coaxing” involved. If you’re reluctant to commit the crime, and the police really do coax you into it, then you have an entrapment defense. But so far as I can discern, your idea of “coax” is “sell them the drugs when asked.” Since no one else shares that definition of coax, you’re not going to get very far with it.
I will acknowledge that. The law is not my domain. In fact I’m quite ignorant of it. However, I do have principles and morals I can call on to help me judge the wisdom of a particular law. That’s the whole reason this thread is in GD. If it was about what the law actually says it would be a factual question in GQ.
So possession of a controlled substance should not be a crime for police officers? Offering sex for money should be perfectly legal as long as you don’t actually intend to follow through on your offer? They aren’t “attempted” crimes? And yet if I were to “attempt” to sell drugs in the hood, or “attempt” to obtain money for sexual services, even with no intent to follow through, I would be a criminal?
I guess my disagreement is with “attempt” being considered a crime. Sure, attempted murder, attempted rape, attempted robbery, these are real crimes that affect people and should be outlawed on their own merits. But an attempted drug sale is a crime that effects no one. It is in fact a crime that never took place. And police should concern themselves with real crimes instead of manufacturing them.
Pray tell, what sort of areas are “known” for drug sales? Places where dark-skinned poor people live and frequent? What does a drug seller look like?
Let me tell you, I smoke a lot of pot. It is almost exclusively bought from my close friends and family. But if I were slightly drunk down on Laclede’s Landing in downtown St. Louis and somebody offered me a bag of weed for a decent price, I’d probably accept. That would be a crime I was enticed into committing, and otherwise would have not committed at that time.
Of course, I’m a white male with a college education, so the police aren’t going to interfere with me having a good time in STL (except for DUI). Which is the crux of the matter. Stings are about putting “certain types” of people behind bars without evidence that they actually committed a crime. In police eyes, if you’re the type of person who associates with drug dealers at night in bad neighborhoods, you are up to no good and should be locked up, regardless. Stings are about manufacturing a crime to facilitate the incarceration of a class of people police have previously decided were “bad”.
I agree with the sentiment, however, that most of the bad feelings I get from this practice have to do with drugs and prostitution being against the law. But part of it is that I really don’t like people being arrested for a potential crime. Arrest them for an actual crime that actually took place and actually hurt someone else. Police crime prevention should be limited to education and visible deterrence, not arresting harmless would-be criminals.
“Enticed”? Sorry, no. The mere fact that an opportunity to commit a crime pretents itself does not absolve you of responibility for committing the crime. You might as well say that since a bank was present in town the bank robber shouldn’t be held responsible because the opportunity to commit the crime ‘enticed’ him.
And regarding the rest of that post, this is about race suddenly? Perhaps crimes are enforced in a racially discriminatory manner but that has nothing to do with whether stings are legitimate. You are really coming across as trying desperately to find any excuse for criminals not to have to take responsibilty for their own actions.
Which is why, if I read the links correctly, the cops wouldn’t offer you a bag of weed. You’d have to ask them for it.
Are you saying that by putting an undercover officer in the area they are somehow enticing you to commit a crime that you wouldn’t otherwise commit? That seems like an awfully low standard to set for entrapment.
In prostitution stings, the cops are very careful not to say “I’ll do X if you give me $Y”. That would be entrapment. Instead they say “Hey baby,” and wait for the Johns to say “Will you do X if I give you $Y?”. That is solicitation and is a crime.
I’m saying cops shouldn’t get involved in the crime. If they want to hide behind a dumpster and wait for me to buy drugs in front of them, that’s one thing. For them to offer me drugs, or solicit me into prostitution, or conspire with me in any way to commit a crime, that is wrong, especially if the crime was never completed and I still get arrested.
If they really don’t conspire with their arrestees to commit a crime, and every ‘sting’ is the equivalent of standing on the street corner and waiting for random idiots to ask them for drugs, that’s different. But I still don’t agree with arresting people for what they haven’t done. Asking a stranger if they are a drug dealer is stupid and rude, but it shouldn’t be a crime. And once the cop says “I sure am a drug dealer, and I’ve got a few grams of crack right here if you’re interested” in order to get more incriminating evidence, that’s when they’ve crossed the line in my opinion.
It isn’t about race, it’s about class. Not stings, but drug and prostitution laws. “Idiot poor people who spend their meager scraps of money on sex and drugs are BAD, and we’ll arrest them and put them in jail even if they’ve harmed no one else.” And then there are the cops who enforce these laws with relish, while fine upstanding rich folks are getting away with sodomy and illegal fireworks, because “hey, how does a consensual blowjob or tiny explosion hurt anyone.”
An attempted murder is a crime that never took place, too. At the heart of the issue is you believe the completed crime of murder should be punished, so you’re fine with punishing the attempt. But you don’t believe the completed crime of weed possession should be a crime, so you balk at punishing the attempt.
Are you serious? There are answers to this, but I suspect your questions are rhetorical.
And you’d have an entrapment defense. But you changed the rules slightly to present your scenario. As has been emphasized repeatedly above, the stinbg requires that you OFFER to buy the bag of weed, not that it’s offered to you.
And again, according to the links about what is kosher and what isn’t, they wouldn’t be saying that. They could reply “What do you want?” and if you reply with “Cocaine” and go through with the attempt to purchase, you get busted.
I have no problem with this kind of sting vs hanging around behind dumpsters. Stings are much more efficient and likely to result in convictions. If we’re going to enforce these laws I want the police to so in the most efficient manner.
I admitted before that part of my opposition is due to my own disdain for the drug prohibition. That is true. But I mean it when I say I don’t agree attempted crimes should be crimes except in specific cases. Attempted murder is not a crime that never took place. There is a victim, who is probably physically hurt and emotionally devastated. There are repercussions society-wide, even if no one was actually murdered. You can’t say that about a failed drug deal.
They were mostly rhetorical at the time. But now I really am interested in an answer. It has been my experience that so-called “dangerous neighborhoods” are often just poor and run down, and being “known for crime” is often just an indication of blight and squalor. Way back in the day, when I bought various types of drugs routinely, I almost never went anywhere but subdivisions and well-to-do back road homes. So being “known for drugs” to me mostly means subdivisions and teenage white kids. Somehow I don’t think that’s where these police stings are happening.
I suppose I’m just ignorant, then. If the cops are just hanging around, waiting for me to incriminate myself, what’s the difference between that and how they normally operate, except for wearing plain clothes? I was under the impression (mostly from television and movies, I’ll admit) that cops take a much more active role in facilitating the crime in order to obtain evidence. My position in this thread is that cops shouldn’t take an active role in a crime at all. If they’re just waiting around for me to break the law, I don’t see a problem with that.
Yawn. This has squat to do with whether sting operations are inherently immoral. At best you’re erroneously conflating unrelated issues (sting operations/cop predjudices) and at worst you’re smokescreening.