Entrapment
Tempting Ordinary People
By Daniel Muniz

Everybody at one time or another has found something that didn’t belong to them like money lying on the pavement of a parking lot. For the sake of argument, let’s say that the cash is a ten or a twenty dollar bill and that it is quite apparent that there is no way to find its rightful owner. What do you do?

And if you did ask someone in that parking lot, I imagine that perfect strangers would be more than happy to claim that the cash could possibly be theirs if there were no strings attached. As a result, it would be natural for a lot of people to just pocket the money if it was small and insignificant (I admit that I would).

However, if it’s obvious that the owner is standing right beside the bill or you saw it fall off from someone, then there is an inclination for most people to do what it is right and bring it to their attention. Of course there are always exceptions but I personally feel a lot of people would do the right thing.

Now suppose that you found something that clearly belongs to someone who can be identified like a cell phone or a purse. No longer is it an anonymous item so there would be an inclination among a lot of people to do the right thing.

I have personally found such items before like a purse, dog, etc, and it was fairly easy to track down the legitimate owner. And I have also been the recipient of having lost items returned to me such as a cell phone and even a checkbook. As a result, I personally feel morally obligated to make an extra effort to locate the rightful owners because I believe that I have been blessed by the grace of God. There were good decent people on the planet that did the right thing and spared me of a lot of misery by returning something valuable of mine.

Now let’s say you found a couple of one hundred dollar bills or perhaps an Xbox or an iPod still in its unbroken original package and there is no way to identify who the owner is. What would you do?

Now this is a gray area. The value is higher but for the most part, it may not be worth the hassle to take it to the police. If you found it somewhere inside a mall, then it would be easy to hand it to a security guard or to the mall office and let their lost and found department deal with it.

I cannot honestly say what I would do if I personally found several hundred dollar. If I stumbled on to a paper sack filled with wads of hundred dollar bills I would assume that it was drug money so I wouldn’t want to be anywhere near it especially if there was a drug dealer still looking for his lost money. And I believe I would probably call the police.

But for nominal amounts I feel that there would a tendency for people to think of an unattended Xbox or iPod as being an early Christmas present. After all, there is no way to identify the owner so what could be the harm of taking it?

Incidentally, the NYPD of New York City snagged almost 300 people in Operation Lucky Bag. This sting operation left such items in a subway station and then promptly arrested anyone who subsequently walked away with it.

However, quite a number of those arrested happened to be people who had absolutely no criminal record.

I consider myself to be a “law and order” type of person who wants thugs and lowlife degenerates locked up in jail for a long time. Nevertheless, I don’t care for these kinds of entrapment cases. In Operation Lucky Bag, police targeted the ordinary Joe Schmoe instead of the hoodlums and gang bangers.

Admittedly, I love the sting operations where police use a baited car equipped with hidden cameras to entice car thieves or an undercover officer posing as a bum to attract muggers. In these circumstances, law enforcement is concentrating their efforts on catching the street hoods and career criminals who are the dirt bags who need to be brought to justice.

And I feel the same way about sting operations involving officers posing as drug dealers or hookers. The people who use these services are ruining neighborhoods and the fabric of the local community because of the criminal element that they attract in their traffic of sex and drugs.

But I am just rubbed the wrong way whenever law enforcement plunges Joe Sixpack into a morality play.

A Kings County criminal court judge acquitted one defendant of Operation Lucky Bag and stated:

"[The police] do not need to manipulate a situation where temptation may overcome even people who would normally never think of committing a crime."

Source: ABC News

And in a rare exception, I wholeheartedly agree. Using entrapment as a legal defense rarely works for thugs and lowlife degenerates because of the brazenness and gall of their crimes. But with something like Operation Lucky Bag, it smacks of entrapment because of how it tantalizes the sensibilities of very ordinary people especially the ones who have no criminal record to speak of.

I can imagine a grandmother or an impoverished parent seeing an abandoned item and perhaps thinking that it might make a good present for a youngster. There could be a whole slew of reasons that could enter into the thought processes of someone stumbling upon merchandise of nominal value in which it appears as if nobody wants it. If that is indeed the case, then why not put it good use?

I in no way condone the practice of taking something that is not yours. However, if something looks abandoned or hopelessly lost, then I feel that millions of people wouldn’t have an immediate answer because it would depend on the circumstances and the surrounding environment of their situation.

As for myself, I don’t know what I would do. But in all truthfulness, I would much rather not be put to the test.

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