What are your thoughts about police sting operations for misdemeanor offenses? (details inside)

~ ~ ~ Do you know anyone that has been “Stung”, like the face in the mirror ? ? jk

Bikes are not a $5 pack of smokes or a loaf of bread, sure it is sneaky but it must be putting a hurt on the thieves.

It definitely toes the line of being unethical. I often mention perception on Fluther. It plays a big role in this case.

Think about it. If I see a $50 bill on the ground, I consider it unclaimed and therefore if I pick it up, it’s now mine. Obviously, someone probably didn’t just throw it there for anyone. The owner of the bill was negligent, and is now out of $50.

Some people see an unlocked/unattended bike the same way.

Others may figure time into the equation. If a bike sits unlocked/unattended for several days, I would probably take it. In that case, I wouldn’t feel like I committed a crime. I would consider the bike abandoned.

They do a reality show called “bait car.” I find it quite amusing.
In my opinion, it is a form of entrapment….

@Tropical_Willie it most certainly has an effect in decreasing the number of bicycle thefts on and around campus. From what I understand there is a small but prolific number of thieves that commit most of the thefts in any given year and once you put the hurt on them a couple of times (fines and jail time increases with each conviction) the number of thefts drops off dramatically. After that what you see are more what I would term crimes of opportunity, there is an untended bicycle, someone needs a ride and grabs it to ride across campus. Still, what they did was not nice and not legal. And see, this is where my moral dilemma kicks in. Here we have a program that catches people who do the unethical but, in my opinion borders on the unethical itself, and it is effective not in preventing crime but in punishing those who act in a criminal manner.

If they are intended to be “stolen”, then it is not really theft, if someone actually takes it, and any punitive action dispensed for taking these bikes should be considered unlawful.

That’s entrapment, and I consider it entirely unethical.

The laws in my state say that “found items” should be reported to the police, so they can attempt to find the owner – then if the owner doesn’t show within a certain number of days you can keep it (minus some processing fees and newspaper ad costs).

I wonder if this entrapment scheme gives the “criminals” time to follow such a law or to locate the owner on their own (say, an ad on the school message board saying they found a bike), or if they jump out of the bushes at the kid’s dorm an hour later with handcuffs ready to go.

Hey @Muad_Dib you left your car in Target and I take it; what do you you call it?

Really theft is theft.

I sorta agree with @MrGrimm888 maybe they should put some kind of flimsy lock on it, so the average person would think that is someones bike and not abandoned ,and if they choose to break the lock and take the bike it would be less form of entrapment, and truly theft not just look I found a discarded bike.
But that is just my opinion.

That’s really stupid thing to do!!!

No victim, no crime.

By the way, my bike cost me over $700

If I had a $700 bike I probably wouldn’t leave it lying about the quad unlocked so…

It is locked but if the they should cut through the lock; some people think it was abandoned. So . . .
“No victim, no crime” ???

Bike theft is generally crappy, but I don’t like these police methods.

I don’t like the entrapment and over-use of technology. I don’t like the police interfering with the environment by adding trap bikes, nor adding trapped devices that track people and have squads hunting down people with the bikes.

I also don’t like the general approach of responding to crimes by changing the world we live in to make it more controlled in ways that can have other effects, particularly that people may be watched and tracked by invisible technology. It creates a context of being watched and hunted because of an expectation of wrongdoing and a grasping need to control and punish.

@Tropical_Willie I am missing your point the questions details says it is unlocked, I think some people seeing a bike unlocked and in the same place for a few days would think it was dumped by some one, maybe a kid that wanted mommy and daddy to buy them a new on.
A locked bike signals it is someones and it has a lock on it, and breaking or cutting that lock is truly theft and a less form of entrapment.

Actually I like the idea. Once the word gets out theft of bicycles will go down. The thieves will think twice before grabbing one.
Constrution generators used to be stolen all the time until they started coming with Lojack type devices which identified their location.
There would be many more iphone thefts, some potentially violent, if they didn’t “brick themselves and post on the “find my phone” app.

Like your mother taught you in kindergarten: “If it does not belong to you leave it alone.”

I assume there had been a raft of thefts on campus, most likely from outside, and the complaints rose to a level that needed addressing.
I was told by a police officer that they would often see kids riding into the suburbs 2 to a bike, but only saw single riders riding out of the burbs. Hmmm….

Yeah, I’m not really fond of the idea of staging crimes just to get quick and easy punishments.

They could instead give free GPS trackers to everyone on campus.

If it is a theft ring they are not just taking one bike. It is their job. They come back again and again because they know they will not be caught. Get the ring and you solve the vast majority of the problem.
Get the word out that there might be a tracker on bikes and you dissuade the few interested in crimes of opportunity.

And if it’s some dumb neighborhood kid on his way home from his $2/hr waiter gig at 3am, and wasn’t going out of his way to take anything, but he’s got 5 miles to walk and thus bike’s just sitting here on the sidewalk…

It’s creating crime in the name of preventing it.

It is a money making scheme, nothing more.

In a nearby city to me, people are constantly getting they’re bikes stolen or the lights taken off their bikes. And they are locked. I could see using a method like this to catch some of the thieves. If there has not been a lot of bike theft in an area, then I wouldn’t approve of it.

Bait bikes is a good name for this. They are trying to lure otherwise honest people. I don’t like it.

I will repeat myself a theft is a theft.
I’m tempted to steal a 2017 Corvette that is unlocked. Some people seem to think that would be coool and okay. Oh most Corvette have LoJack just like the bikes.
But I’m not a stealing anything because it was unlocked; that is their logic for why it is okay to steal it. SMH

That is like comparing peanuts to grapefruits and you know it, a bike is something that can and sometimes do get discarded, like by a kid that wants mommy and daddy to buy them a new one,I won’t disagree that it is still theft, but not the same as stealing an unlocked sports car that is licensed to someone.
All I am saying is a flimsy lock,and if they then choose to break or cut it then it’s no guess about theft and not an easy case of entrapment.

Half of everything I own (including bikes) are what I pick up next to downtown alley dumpsters at the beginning of every month when folks end their leases. The city is full of free treasure.

You know, I’ve spoken to people from other countries, who think it’s horrifying that police sit on the side of the road here in America and wait for people to pass them too fast so they can slap them with a fine, or look for an excuse to search them and arrest them.

There is a massive ethical issue with police sting operations encouraging otherwise law-aiding citizens to commit crimes, which they would otherwise not commit had the sting not been put into place, and then punishing them for it.

If it’s legitimate to coerce citizens to commit crimes and then jail or fine them for it, then what stops police from jailing any of us and just making up a reason later?

and before it’s brought up – I’m similarly opposed to drug sales/manufacture stings, prostitution stings, sobriety checkpoints, and any other situation in which someone is sent to jail or fined for causing no harm to any real person.

Well, people need to put GPS trackers on their bikes and if someone steals it THEN get the police involved.

I think it’s terribly petty.

I don’t have a problem with this scenario. I don’t think this is entrapment because, if I recall correctly, entrapment requires there to be some kind of pressure or misleading into committing a crime. This is just making a crime convenient to commit. It’s not going to lure someone who isn’t already willing to steal a bike.

Cops with way too much time on their hands seeking easy revenue generation.