So I'm driving home from work ...

[sailorjim]

Before I write this, allow me to make one thing completely clear:  I dislike anything that even whiffs of entrapment.  I acknowledge that William Claude Dunkenfield had a point about one being unable to cheat an honest man ... if only because a truly honest man rarely places himself in a position of being cheated ... and that all one has to do to

Comments

[blaisepascal]

This is not entrapment. Legally, entrapment involves the LEO enticing you into doing something you wouldn't have done otherwise.

In this case, the three folks who turned left thought "hey, I can get away with it, because he's busy".

If you had had a hitchhiker in your car who was an undercover LEO who was telling you "You can cut 5 minutes off your travel time if you turn left here" and when you point out the signs and the cop continues with "He's busy with someone else, he won't stop you", then that's entrapment, because you would not otherwise have made the turn.

This was a good trap, for sure, but not entrapment.

[pauamma]

Bruce Schneier (IIRC) mentioned that some financial scammers ("I have money left from (mumble) that I want to transfer to (country) and I need your assistance" and simiar scams) deliberately write their scambait so that only the abysmally stupid will bite, because there will still be enough of those even if only 1 person in 10 million bites, and the cost of spamming 10 million addresses is more than made up by what you can grab from that one person. I wonder whether something similar is at work here.

[moropus]

We really need more bleach in the old gene pool.

[azurelunatic]

That's opportunism, not entrapment. :D

[gary_jordan]

Trap, yes. Entrapment, no.

And HAPPY BIRFDAY!