It’s an epidemic.
Was that an example of entrapment?
PC
Fucking crap crappy crap crap boards. Okay, here’s the post, more or less:
Yesturday, here in Austin, the police arrested about 74 drug dealers in what they call “Operation Spring Cleaning.” The method through which they caught some of these drug dealers was Officer A approaches drug dealer dressed in street garb, purchases drugs from said drug dealer, then arrests them. One of my co-workers asked “Isn’t that entrapment?” and a few seemed to agree. I don’t know much about legal terms and the like, but this seems to be a common tactic from used by police, so I don’t think it is. I don’t see how this can be any different from an officer pretending to be a drug dealer then arresting someone who purchases drugs. Is she right, or does she know even less about the subject than I do?
IANAPolice Officer I think it’s only entrapment when the police try to make someone do something they wouldn’t ordinarily do. The officer asked the dealer to sell him drugs (illegal). The dealer could have refused and claimed to not know what the officer was talking about. The dealer was not forced to sell the drugs.
You have to provide more details. The test for entrapment is whether the idea to commit the crime arose in the police officer or in the defendant. If the police officer enticed the illegal act, it’s entrapment. If it was the defendant who initiated the act, it is not. So if an officer purchases drugs from a dealer, it is not entrapment ordinarily, as the idea to sell the drugs was the dealer’s not the officer.