i actually saw this show for the first time yesterday and i personally have a real problem with the tactics used.....
i don't think law enforcement should be creating fake "opportunities" to bait people regardless of the crime.
by creating easy opportunities of certain crimes you increase the chances of someone moving from just thinking about a crime to actually committing it.
take the following for example. the cops go to a large busy outdoor cafe, a plain clothes officer sits down for a coffee and puts his wallet on the table and walks away intentionally for a minute or two.... other officers are at another table far away stealthily monitoring the wallet on the table. the cops repeatly do this throughout the day hoping someone will come in an take the wallet then they arrest that person for theft....
yes, sometimes you will catch somebody who is an active theif on occasion, but most of the time the person to be caught is someone who gives into a crime of opportunity. on any given day in any other situation this person would not have done what they did, but the officers have created such a perfect opportunity that it is not easily resisted by most....
situations determine human behavior far more than personality does..... what the cops are doing is manipulating a situation that greatly increases the chance that someone will commit a crime that most likely they would never commit given naturally occuring situations
i find this creation of situations to catch criminals to be rather orwellian..... it's the closest you can get to arresting people for thought crimes without actually reading their minds... the cops are creating the crime scene and waiting for someone to play the part of the perpetrator
the other problem i have with the actual arresting of these people is that the perpetrators aren't actually talking to underage girls, they are talking to adult cops..... by arresting people for soliciting someone for sex who they THOUGHT was an underage girl is essentially arresting someone for thought crime.... since an person thought to be underage girl was NOT in real life an underage girl then no crime has been committed....
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