D.C. Cops Conducting FBI-Like Stings to Arrest People They Predetermine as ‘Bad Guys’

Cmdr. Melvin Scott, who oversees the operations, defended the
practice to the Post, saying, “we have to feel
comfortable and confident that these are bad guys, the guys we
want. We’re not pressing these guys. They are boldly stating their
job experience.” 

The Washington Post this week reported
on sting operations used by D.C. police officers to target
“people they think are likely to commit armed robberies.” The
controversial tactics have resulted in more than a dozen federal
court convictions thus far. 

One of the more recent operations led to the arrest of five men
preparing to rob a fictional drug dealer created by undercover
officers. While waiting for an undercover officer’s “contact” to
give them the go-ahead, a SWAT team stormed into the room and
“dragged the men out by their feet.”

A 2012 operation involved an undercover officer recruiting three
men to rob a liquor store in Adams Morgan. Police bought two of the
men, ages 18 and 19, alcohol and “tried unsuccessfully to get at
least one of them into a strip club.” The men were eventually
arrested on conspiracy to to commit robbery, which has landed them
in prison for three to four years.

Michelle Peterson, the attorney for one of the men, highlighted
the questionable nature of these operations: 

“Everything that was done to plan this alleged event was done by
the police officers,” said Michelle Peterson, the attorney for one
of the men. In arguing for a lighter sentence, Peterson said the
police had “continued to ply this young, impressionable man with
alcohol, scantily clad women and offers of obscene amounts of money
if he did what they wanted him to do.”

These stings, which many people see as unfair entrapment, extend
far beyond our nation’s capital. Last fall, an autistic teen in
California was persuaded to buy pot for an undercover police
officer. On one occasion, he exchanged 0.6 grams of marijuana for
$20 with the officer. The teen was eventually charged with two
felony counts of selling marijuana. (Watch ReasonTV’s coverage of
the story here.) 

If you find these stories absurd, you’re not alone. Two federal
judges have recently thrown out cases that involved sting
operations put on by the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms,
and Explosives. In one of the cases, three suspects had already
plead guilty to crimes that would have put them in prison for seven
years or more. They had been convinced by undercover officers to
assist in robbing an imaginary stash house for drugs with the
promise of an enormous payday.

U.S. District Court Judge Manuel Real
declared the operation unconstitutional, saying, “The
government created the fictitious crime from whole cloth.” Another
judge, Stephen Reinhardt,
expressed a similar sentiment in a dissenting opinion on a
different case last April: “The government verges too close to
tyranny when it sends its agents trolling through bars, tempts
people to engage in criminal conduct, and locks them up for
unconscionable periods of time when they fall for the scheme.”