Are police stings ethical?

M

marcinny

#1
#1
SNIP
Provo officers noticed ads on Web sites that were promoting sex services in Utah Valley and decided they needed to deter such activities. They set up phony online ads on the Web sites, suggesting that women would be available for work on May 7. That day, nine men showed up at a hotel where two female officers posed as hookers. The men were arrested and cited on charges of patronizing a prostitute, a class B misdemeanor.

SNIP
In the Provo sting, no prostitution services were ever going to provided. The authorities managed the whole affair. No one was ever at risk. The "crime" was rooted in fiction from beginning to end. There was no underlying crime because there was no actual prostitute.

In short, the worst that occurred was a "thought crime," which takes us straight into Orwell's "1984." The men only thought they were going to hook up with a prostitute, but the whole scheme was a ruse to make them think dirty thoughts. It apparently worked quite well, but dirty thoughts are not a crime. "Intent" may constitute a crime, but intent is meaningless without an avenue to carry it out.



SNIP
Consider New York City's "Operation Lucky Bag" from a couple of years ago. Police left wallets, shopping bags, purses and backpacks sitting unattended at subway stations and other public places. When people picked up the decoys, and walked past nearby uniformed officers without turning in the found objects, detectives swooped in. Police trumpeted that nearly half of those arrested had police records.

http://www.heraldextra.com/content/view/309733/3/
 
billyS

billyS

Reign of Terror
#2
#2
Stings are unethical because you are prodding people to commit crimes. That is a lazy way for the cops to make it look like they are fighting crime. They should put there dougnuts down and get there asses out there and solve some real crimes.
 
D

donquixote04

#3
#3
billyS said:
Stings are unethical because you are prodding people to commit crimes. That is a lazy way for the cops to make it look like they are fighting crime. They should put there dougnuts down and get there asses out there and solve some real crimes.
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Are they prodding people, or just providing an opportunity? If prodding, then not ethical. If providing an opportunity, then they are okay.
 
S

SWninja

#4
#4
I'd like to one up the posed question.

I think it's unethical for cops to even be policing things like prostitution.

  • Prostitution is a victimless crime. Both parties are consenting adults.
  • There are far too many other crimes that need to be dealt with.
  • Stings, are merely a tool of politics.

The only exceptions I can foresee regarding policing this sort of activity.

  • When pimps are involved.
  • Drug users
  • STD infected providers

All of the exceptions can be removed from the equation as proven in

  • Canada(where prostitution is not necessarily a crime, only pimping is legal)
  • Europe(where in some countries, prostitutes require frequent testing)

Granted the rates over in Nevada's legal brothels are astronomical, if prostitution was somehow legalized throughout the US, the rates were eventually standardize/stabilize itself based on the rules of supply & demand + competition.
 
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D

donquixote04

#5
#5
872309 said:
... I think it's unethical for cops to even be policing things like prostitution.

  • Prostitution is a victimless crime. Both parties are consenting adults.
  • There are far too many other crimes that need to be dealt with.
  • Stings, are merely a tool of politics.
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These are not reasons why stings are unethical. Instead, these are just reasons why stings may be inefficient use of police resources.
 
D

donquixote04

#6
#6
SWninja said:
... Prostitution is a victimless crime. Both parties are consenting adults. ...
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This may be true most of the time, but it is certainly not always true. Sadly, there have been too many cases of human trafficking, even in the NYC metropolitan area.
 
J

justlooking

#8
#8
donquixote04 said:
Are they prodding people, or just providing an opportunity? If prodding, then not ethical. If providing an opportunity, then they are okay.
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It's not just that. If they're prodding people rather than just providing an opportunity, it's not only unethical but illegal, and if the legal system is working, any arrests would be set aside on grounds of entrapment.

I get the feeling that in the prostitution area, it's almost never entrapment. I mean, if you take the effort to post or answer a CL ad, it's got to be because you wanted to do it, not because you were somehow prodded into it.
 
Thorn

Thorn

#10
#10
I am of mixed feelings on the subject dating back to when I first found out that in order to catch kiddie porn customers [something I think we can all agree is a very bad thing] the US postal police became the largest distributors of kiddie porn in the world. Including shipping the stuff to people who never asked for it to see if they would turn it in when delivered to them, and if they didn't the would charge them.

I believe there is a place for the well set-up, fully legal, police sting.

For instance, setting up a fake - police run - fencing operation to attract burglars in to fence their stolen goods doesn't put anything into the mind of the burglars to commit burglaries but does identify them to police and recover stolen merchandise.

Stings where fake prostitution front bring in johns work the same way. No one is putting the idea into the johns head to commit an act of solicitation.

The question comes down not to a matter of legality, but if it is an expedient use of limited police resources.

Prostitution is NOT a victimless crime. Selling sex could be victimless if legalized and proper due diligence used in its management. Still providers and clients alike are robbed and assaulted, people who know they have STD's practice high risk sex acts with the previously uninfected on both sides, and other bits of mayhem.

Changes in legal and cultural status that would bring with it mandatory testing, zoning, legal remedy and police protection, etc, might go a long way to abate such problems but are unlikely in their forthcoming. So because of the acts that hitchhike upon prostitution that will remain unchanged it will continue to be a source of new victims produced on a regular basis, and that is unfortunate for all of us [particularly us here] since it doesn't have to be the case.
 
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H

HawkEye65

#11
#11
Thorn said:
I am of mixed feelings on the subject dating back to when I first found out that in order to catch kiddie porn customers [something I think we can all agree is a very bad thing] the US postal police became the largest distributors of kiddie porn in the world. Including shipping the stuff to people who never asked for it to see if they would turn it in when delivered to them, and if they didn't the would charge them.

I believe there is a place for the well set-up, fully legal, police sting.
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I agree with a place for a well set-up legal police sting. I disagree with the postal police example, since if I received kiddie porn in the mail it would immediately end up 1) in the shredder, 2) in the fireplace, or 3) at the local police dept to investigate the sender. Options 1 & 2 would result in me being charged, and option 3 would result in a waste of resources of the postal police AND my local police (with the assumption that there was inadequate coordination between postal and local/state LE).
 
J

justlooking

#12
#12
Just to be clear, whatever the Postal Service kiddie porn sting is, it CAN'T be that they just send random people kiddie porn out of the blue and then arrest them for receiving it. There's no way that kind of thing could stand up in court. And when it was discovered they were doing it, the public outrage would be off the charts.

LE just isn't that stupid (and, contrary to popular belief around here, isn't that fascist either).

There HAS to be more to it than that. The American legal system just doesn't work that way.
 
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B

Bandaid

#13
#13
justlooking said:
Just to be clear, whatever the Postal Service kiddie porn sting is, it CAN'T be that they just send random people kiddie porn out of the blue and then arrest them for receiving it. There's no way that kind of thing could stand up in court. And when it was discovered they were doing it, the public outrage would be off the charts.

LE just isn't that stupid (and, contrary to popular belief around here, isn't that fascist either).

There HAS to be more to it than that. The American legal system just doesn't work that way.
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I agree. The lead case of this kind is Jacobson Vs. United States,where the postal police worked on a Nebraska farmer for 2 1/2 years before he finally ordered an illegal magazine and was busted for it. When the cops searched his house, they found that magazine was the only illegal item Jacobson had. The government created the inclination to the crime. The Supreme Court found entrapment.

That's way different than a prostitution sting where the guys were trolling Craigslists adult sections. Defending yourself on ther theory there was no inclination to commit the crime is a tough sell on those facts.
 
Thorn

Thorn

#17
#17
justlooking said:
Just to be clear, whatever the Postal Service kiddie porn sting is, it CAN'T be that they just send random people kiddie porn out of the blue and then arrest them for receiving it. There's no way that kind of thing could stand up in court. And when it was discovered they were doing it, the public outrage would be off the charts.

LE just isn't that stupid (and, contrary to popular belief around here, isn't that fascist either).

There HAS to be more to it than that. The American legal system just doesn't work that way.
Click to expand...
It wasn't random. This was years ago [predating video tape] and it had to do with those little ads they had in the back of the lesser men's mags like "Gallery" and "Jugs".

A guy would send for the porno that had some suggestive title but did not explicitly say it was kiddie porn. Something like "Sweet Little Temptations" or the like. The Postal Authority would send KP. Usually, if it was turned in immediately, no arrest was made. If it wasn't turned in the Postal Police would come a calling.

Now the problem is some people did as was suggested above, they simply threw it away or destroyed it. They'd still get arrested.

BTW, most of the cases I was talking about were thrown out on appeal and when it did become public that the US Postal police was the biggest distributor of child porn in the US there was something of a hue and cry in Congress about it.

It appears that the USPS police are back at it again though as this recent Boston area news story suggests. http://www.thebostonchannel.com/news/19265943/detail.html

It is unlikely that many, if any at all, of these cases will stand up to scrutiny. That won't keep lives from being ruined though.

I'm all for catching bad guys and KP producers and users are some of the worst bad guys there are, but this sort of stuff resolves nothing and just makes the cops almost as bad as the bad guys they are going after.
 
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