Entrapment or not?
Here's the story about an off duty fire fighter in Ohio who strikes up a conversation with a topless woman (legal there) at a public park and is subsequently arrested for exposing himself (at her request).
Just a few guesses on my part but I'll bet:
1) The undercover officer (lot of humor potential there!) wasn't within two weeks of retiring from her 30 year career.
2) She wasn't flat as a board.
3) Her ass wasn't three axe handles wide.
4) Her face wouldn't make a train take a dirt road.
5) Watching the video (it's safe for work) I got the impression she wasn't acting like a bashful convent novitiate. At least not for any convents I've known.
Robin Williams has said that God made men with two heads but only enough blood to supply one at a time. There's more truth than humor to that! Speaking strictly for myself, if some babe was sunning herself half naked where I was walking I'd take another route pronto. "Lead us not into temptation" isn't just a nice phrase in a prayer, men are hardwired to be dogs and should always be aware of it. In my own case that holds true since I'm VERY happily married and want to stay that way! This guy might not have been so lucky.
It sure looks like a cut and dried case of entrapment to me but then again, I'm no law expert. Any comments, especially from Cookie and other law enforcement professionals?
5 comments:
It was also mentioned over at Shooting the Messenger that there is a video tape of the incident. When ever we ran sting operations...the video tapes always had sound just specifically for the purposes and denying any later claims of entrapement. I seriously doubt they would run an operation without audio to protect them from a liable law suit later on....
Cookie, you're the expert so I'll go with your opinion. Guess this fireman has to learn to keep "Mister Happy" under wraps when he's out in public.
Even if an audio visual recoding was used, that does not necessarily rule out entrapment. Law enforcement has been found to have entrapped people in instances where they have recorded their own efforts before. If the regular person would have been tempted to do what this guy did because whatever it was that the officer told him seemed too good to be true in way of a reward for his pulling out his wanker, then it would be ruled as entrapment. It is akin to a police officer trying to sell me drugs then arresting me for trying to buy them. If he offers them at a reasonable price it would not be entrapment; but if I was offered a million dollars worth of narcotics for $5000, that would be entrapment. So if this female officer offered this guy the best sex of his life at her place, or offered him a large amount of money, or marriage, so long as he just pulled it out to show it to her in the park, it possibly could be seen by the courts as entrapment.
By the way, having a female officer sit in a park half naked, makes physical contact with the guy, and asks him to pull out his tool, is pretty disgusting on the part of the police. I do not care if topless sunbathing is legal or not, this is immoral on the part of the police, since the ends do not necessarily justify the means. First of all, what if a little kid had been watching with his bird watching binoculars from the distance (hidden in some bushes). He may have decided to pleasure himself too and then been subjected to some perv walking by. (This park sounds like a perv zone.) Or he may have seen the man's penis, which is supposedly what the police were trying to put a stop to. He may have then thought hey this is acceptable behavior. Yet the police arranged for the exhibition through the request to the man by the undercover officer. That is disgraceful without the officer being half nude, and more so with her being partially unclothed. There are other ways to catch a potential pervert, ways that would be much less likely to subject the public to someone showing off his manhood in a public park.
I am not condoning the act on the part of the guy who got nabbed; but in no way can I condone the actions of the police in this instance, in fact I deplore them.
All the best,
Glenn B
well said, Glenn
Glenn, thanks for your perspective. I value your opinion also, you and Cookie are insiders on this so you've a better handle on these things than folks like myself.
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