British Expatriate Network

Sting operations

A good or bad thing. I tend to lean towards bad. I don't think its right to set someone up to commite a crime. Its may be okay to keep a container open and wait for people to steal TV's, but I stop at that point. There is no way to quantify a crime or a persistant criminal. It could be some stupied sap just passing and sucked in, when in reality he is not a harderen criminal.

As you probably know this is one of the significant distinction between English and US criminal law. Over here such operations need to be carefully structured or they will be deemed 'entrappment' and thus any prosecution will be thrown out.

In England there is no entrappment defense and so anyone caught in such a sting could be successfully prosecuted.

In my view it depends on the circumstances - simply manufacturing and offense just to prosecute someone is a waste of police and court time and does nothing to reduce crime. However, if you are working in an area where a certain crime is prevalent and you want to catch people who regularly commit such crimes then I think it is a legitimate and effective use of resources.

An example would be car parks where thefts from vehicles are endemic. The Police place a car in the car park with tempting items in plain view and them wait, concealed, in a nearby van. Chances are the people they trap are people who went there with the specific intent of stealing from vehicles and have done so before - in that case the sting is merely a device to investigate an existing crime and to my mind legitimate.

I suspect such an operation would probably be lawful in the US too - but I'm not certain.

For the most part I think a good thing, but I do recall a case a few years ago where a motorcycle was placed near a known crminals house who stole it and then prompted drove into traffic and was killed and the argument was are the police to blame.

Actually, whilst "entrapment" may not be on the books in the UK, you still can't do it. If my spelling and my memory are correct, a police officer may not act as an "agent provocateur" in the commision of an offence.

Placing a motorcycle near to where a criminal lives is of itself not "procuring" the crime.....if he walks past and ignores it then all is well. A police officer just can't say "Look there's a motorcycle, you should nick it", nor can he draw attention to it. The thief has to notice it and steal it all by himself, the fact that the police put it there is neither here nor there.

In New York, an undercover policeman ask a man for drugs (buy-and-bust), the man who felt disrespected and resented being asked for drugs got into an argument with the undercover cop who had asked for the drug and they both ended up in a fight. In which case the undercover police man pulled his fire arm and shot the man dead.

It works when you get the real bad guy but since it increases interaction between the police and the public who have no idea they are talking to law enforcement officers it can set the stage for a series of unfortunate events.

Isn't it entrapment in Britain when they use WPC's to lure kerb crawlers?

As I said before, entrapment is perfectly legal in English law - based on successive Court decisions.

Ex-Bobby, rightly, points out that 'procurement' isn't legal.

The distinction would be between a female police officer passively standing on a street and being approached by a kerb crawler (legal) and an undercover police team organizing an armed robbery and recruiting the robbers - only to prosecute them for conspiracy (not legal).

Just as Rob says....... wink

8) As ex bobby said and rob s lol