Mappo, Not only do news stations do this, but we have internal tests on cops. They can do them all they want and I don’t think there will be any major problems except, if I remember in the NYC case cops in a few cases failed to give a reciept to the person as per procedure but they did turn in the money and wallets.

The original operation was completely idiotic, but let’s not claim that the police did worse. A bunch of transit employees did worse.

Nevertheless, the fact that Kerik was NYC commish means that the article is from 2001 at the latest. This compares to the recent 2007 story of rampant corruption and/or inefficiency in NYC transit. I am very willing to believe that NYPD are less corrupt and more efficient, but would still like to see the test done on NYPD in 2007 in view of their sudden interest in arresting and charging people with a felony for commission of an innocent act.

http://abcnews.go.com/Primetime/story?id=132229&page=1

There were 20 wallets or purses given to random LA police officers and all 20 were returned (although 3 police officers refused to take the wallets). Since the details are so similar, this was either the story I was told about (and I screwed up some of the details) or the NY ABC affiliate did a copy cat story with similar results.

You’re right that entrapment is a very tough standard, but the problem with this effort by the police is that it’s not even criminal conduct to pick up a wallet and NOT turn it over to the first police officer you see.

The fact that the item is not handed over is only evidence that the person intended to keep it, which would be a crime. But obviously it’s not very good evidence considering most people who cared to see the item get back to its owner probably would make the effort themselves (let’s not forget the motivator that the owner might give you some sort of reward).

So while technically not entrapment, it is still *creating* crime out of nothing based on serious leaps in reason, and will sweep up innocent people, doubtless.

As for the 20 for 20 item, Mappo. Anything less than a 90% success rate for items that contain the owner’s ID (like a wallet or purse) would be pretty disgraceful for a police department.

Which makes me suspect the desire to make sure people turn stuff over to the cops instead of returning it themselves is to protect a revenue stream.

So, the cops are going to say that they were setting a trap designed to catch predisposed free-wallet-grabbers. Or something.

Honestly though, I don’t even see the utility in the cops setting ANY traps. I suppose there is an argument for the online-underage-sex-predator traps (how else do you deal with kid-molestors?), but even then you can border on entrapment (Jacobson v. United States: SCOTUS ruled that entrapment existed where the guy was bombarded with materials from the US Government for years…).

We need to bring the cops back under the rule of law.

Anyway, if you can find that report, it might be interesting to include, in the interest of fairness. If accurate, it would be somewhat heartening to see that the system can work at times.