Wireless, GPS-Loaded 'Bait Car' Traps Thieves

captainClassLoader writes: "The Washington Post is reporting that a late-model car, loaded with wireless surveillance gear, a remote kill switch and GPS, is being left (unlocked, presumably) on the streets of the Washington, D.C. metro area as 'bait' for car thieves. This article reports that they've just made their first bust with the vehicle."

Good use of technology

[Dead Penis Bird]

It catches car thieves, but only car thieves. This is one of the few uses of technology that has zero probability of catching "the wrong guy".

I wonder if this technology would be extended to the private consumer level?

Entrapment! Or, not...

[Dirtside]

I can already hear the cries of "entrapment" about to spring up all over this article, so I'll point out this definition of entrapment [lectlaw.com], which would seem to indicate that this method (placing a "bait" car in likely spots) is NOT entrapment. I imagine that a court would actually need to rule on this (IANAL), but it's fairly clear-cut to me. Simply placing a car in an area where it is likely to get stolen would not, to any reasonable person, qualify as "government agents [persuading or talking] the person into committing the crime".

Re:Fishing for dumbass...

[ornil]

If the potential thieves read the newspapers and stop stealing cars (they don't know which one is the trap) that would do just fine.

Re:Good use of technology

[Kierthos]

Just wait until some idiot lawyer gets involved. He'll portray his client as a law-abiding citizen who was "entrapped" by the police into hotwiring the car and trying to make off with it, only to be caught by those nasty police officers.

Kierthos

Re:Out of Curiosity

[TheViffer]

If a female officer dresses up like a Pro, and busts a potential client is this entrapment? No.

If a male officier acts like a drug dealer and busts a potential client is this entrapment? No.

If the Dukes of Hazard are flying down the road at 55 mph and pass by a speed limit sign that says 55 mph, just to have Rosco flip a switch which changes it to 35 mph construction zone, is this entrapment. Yes.

Re:Fishing for dumbass...

[MrRagu]

The police don't only have the function of solving crimes they exist also to deter crime. You don't put more cops on the street so that more criminals get caught so much as you put cops on the street to make criminals think twice about committing that crime. This seems like an excellent deterrent and the article says that car theft has dropped in other places where the bait cars were used. So, yes they spent taxpayer money on this, but I'd rather have my car not stolen in the first place than have the cops find it after its been chopped.

Re:Entrapment! Or, not...

[Shagg]

My understanding of entrapment is that it means the police can't try to persuade you to do something illegal that you otherwise would not have.

I don't think them placing bait cars in prime locations could be considered entrapment. IE, they're not encouraging law abiding citizens to steal the car. If they had an undercover cop at the scene trying to talk passers-by into helping him steal the car, that would be entrapment.

Re:Kudos for technology in law enforcement

[Lemmy Caution]

Jail time is only a deterrent if would-be crooks consider it likely they will be caught. The problem with the get-tough-on-crime attitude we've seen is that it's all geared to prosecution, not protection or enforcement. Which is what leads to 3-strike laws which put someone in prison for life for shoplifting, a criminal justice system that has been jailing - even sentencing to death - hundreds of innocent people, yet not making the streets any safer. If a crook faced 90% certainty of facing a reasonable sentence, I believe it would be far better deterrent than 10% certainty of facing a draconian one.

Re:Death Wish

[athakur999]

This is about the police trying to trick people into committing a crime they otherwise MAY not.

How did this car encourage that guy to steal it? If you saw an average car parked somewhere, would you try to steal it?

the law doesn't operate on the likelihood of a person to commit a crime.

Not, it doesn't. But these cars don't catch people who MIGHT try to steal it. These cars catch people who actually DO try to steal it.

Re:footing the bill

[scotch]

You've obviously never had a car (or anything else) stolen then. The poeple who steal cars usually steal lots of cars. And the people who stole these cars undoubtedly would have stolen another car if the bait car wasn't there. The car theft racket in the US is horrible. The percentages of car thefts that are solved, then of those that result in conviction, and then of those that result in the convict doing any meaningful time are all very low. (low percentage) * (low percentage) * (low percentage) = very small percentage of avenged victims. Crime pays in this case. A police officer friend of mine told me that in Seattle, convicted car thiefs rarely do any time.

All your other exmaples of what you want the cops doing are hard to lump together with car theft. Car theft is a crime that results in a loss to its victim. Drug use and prostitution are somewhat victimless crimes. If you don't have problem with people stealing cars, maybe someone should steal your car? Gun ownership isn't a crime outright, so I don't know where you came up with that one.

How the fuck are you supposed to "protect the citizens" if you can't "hunt down the criminals"?

Re:footing the bill

[jgerman]

You are a dumb ass. Hunting down car thieves lowers the probability that your car will get stolen. Just the fact that it's been done once helps you out. I don't want my tax dollars paying for cops sitting on the road with a radar gun, however I do want them to continue getting real criminals off of the street. Guess what, that's the beauty of the tax system, you can pretend that your money doesn't go to sting operations and I can pretend mine doesn't go to traffic cops.

Re:footing the bill

[ChaosDiscordSimple]

This demonstrates perfectly how the job of the police has gone from "protecting the law-abiding" to "hunting down criminals." What is the point of locking up some guy for trying to steal a car that was designed to be stolen?

What's the point? There are a certain number of people who want to steal cars. Given the choice between: 1) Criminal steal bait car, gets caught nearly 100% of the time and is off the streets for at least a short time and 2) Criminal steals my car (or my friends car, or my parents car), gets away nearly 100% of the time, and is able to steal another car tomorrow. I'd prefer the bait car, thanks.

Prostitution and drug dealing is arguably different. If the law and the police weren't involved, everyone involved would be willing to allow the action (the sale of sex/drugs) to occur. Car theft is different. As the owner of the car, I never want someone to steal my car. There are no sane arguments for why car theft is good. Catching someone who steals cars is good. These people are predators who know that they are breaking the law and know that they are depriving another human being of their physical property.

Law enforcement is supposed to product the law-abiding. Protect them from what? Criminals. Catching the criminals before they steal from the law-abiding seems like effective, pro-active protection to me.

I for one hope police use bait like this in more cases, I know too many people who have had car windows smashed and car stereos stolen. I know too many people who have had apartments broken into.

I tend to agree, but...

[j09824]

I tend to agree that it isn't entrapment. But depending on what they do, it may be dangerously close and set a bad precedent for other areas of law. Also, if they leave the key in the ignition, they will probably end up catching many more low-level crooks that might otherwise not steal cars.

It Will Only Catch the Dumb and the Desperate

[RhettLivingston]

This car will be so well known so quickly, that the only ones it will catch are the really dumb or desperate ones that were the most likely ones to be caught anyway. Why bother. Its the pros they need to track down. The people that steal hundreds of cars, not the nuisance guys. Just seems like another way for the police to pump up the numbers and pretend the job is getting done.

Re:I live in DC....

[danielobvt]

soo.... You support car thieves? Anything that makes thieves think twice about taking my stuff is a good thing. Particularily since there is no way to accidentally get caught by this ploy (hardly anybody accidentally steals a car. The only scenario that they could accidentally take the car is if the car looks like it is theirs, and their key somehow makes it work. And even then you could explain it away.). Anyway, I think this vehicle is being used by Arlington cops, and seeing as Arlington is not DC then you shouldn't have any problems.

Re:Good use of technology

[NeMon'ess]

If you read the article, you would have read:
"Entrapment is where the government plants the seed of a crime in the mind of individual who would not otherwise be criminally inclined," Trodden said. " . . . We don't want that. But if we had somebody who was out there, ready to steal something . . . it's good police work."

Take issue with that if you want. Apparently by US law it is not entrapment.

Re:Fishing for dumbass...

[raju1kabir]

So instead of investigating existing car robberies, they use our tax money to buy a car that is meant to be stolen. Great.

What, you think that each thief steals one car and then retires?

What they're doing here makes it less likely that your car will be stolen. If your car is the only one on the street, and someone wants to steal a car, there's a 100% chance that it'll be yours, and some <100% chance that it'll be recovered.

On the other hand, if this trap car is also on the streets, then there's only a 50% chance yours will be selected for theft. And there's a 100% chance the thief will be caught before he comes back to steal your car.

You should be on your knees thanking the Arlington police for this.

(Personally, I don't like it, because I believe that car theft improves urban quality-of-life by driving up the cost of car ownership, but that's neither here nor there for this discussion.)

Re:Out of Curiosity

[NeMon'ess]

If you could get $10,000,000,000 or control a country, or get elected to a very prestigious post, or be appointed, and all you had to do was something illegal, would you? The cop was offering a blow job for $10 and hounding him about it. Think of this as a scaled down version of the above. This isn't even like finding a wallet and taking $80 cash out before you return it with the cards and ID to the owner. This is less than that in the evilness ranking. Maybe you're %100 good hearted and have never jaywalked in your life, but most people do break the law from time to time.

Re:Kudos for technology in law enforcement

[pcidevel]

I am all for this type of law enforcement. I think this type of sting operation ought to be cheap enough to manage with centralized administration and small teams. Maybe this will be a decent deterrent, as jail time obviously isn't enough.

Well I certainly think I'm all for this type of law enforcement, but when I begin to contemplate the future of these types of stings, I must admit that it scares me. I saw an example of this type of car used for an arrest on the discovery channel. They had two girls pull over to the side of the road and get out of the car and start yelling at one another about how girl 1 is just going to "leave his car here and he can come pick it up himself".. then she makes a big show of throwing the keys into the car and slamming the door (presumably without locking the doors) and then gets into her friend's car and off they drive. It's important to mention that before they did this big show, an undercover police officer drove around and found someone he thought looked like an individual who would steal a car (he scoped out a potential target) then they did the act directly in front of this person.

Now I agree with the fact that stealing a car is stealing a car, but this seems to me to be quite a bit like monitoring for thought crime. Present a situation to an individual that is not likely to ever happen, then see if that individual is willing to break the law under these special circumstances. It is easy to see them bring it a step further. Lets say they decide to start catching muggers by having a guy walk out into the street and shout "Wow, I can't believe the ATM just let me withdraw $10,000!!!".

Okay I still agree, a mugging is a mugging. Maybe now that they're catching all of the muggers and the car thieves, they decide to start trying to catch people who are willing to traffic drugs. They start going door to door with a small brown package and offer $10,000 to a person if he'll just deliver the small brown package to an address downtown. Suddenly the police are presenting hypothetical situations that could never exist in reality, just to see if people are willing to break the law in these extreme circumstances. Suddenly the police can transform ANYONE into a criminal, just by finding the threshold of risk vs. reward for that individual.

I would think leaving one of these cars in a high crime area and waiting for them to get stolen is a noble thing. But it scares me when they begin to make false senario's and they target people who fit the profile of a car thief. It seems to me that they are creating crime with these hypothetical situations, then arresting people for having the potential to do wrong if an impossible situation were to occur. Leaving a locked car to be stolen is perfectly acceptable, but creating a situation that is too good to be true frightens me..

Law breaking, GPS, and the common man

[Anonymous Coward]

Anyone remember this argument. The Rental car
company w/ the GPS speed monitor, which gave
fines to the renter when a certian speed was
exceeded. This is something I'm more concerned
with.
[wired.com]
article from wired

Re:Isn't this illegal?

[SecurityGuy]

I'm sure everyone of us could be encouraged to do something illegal if the setup was correct.

Hardly true. To my thinking it doesn't matter if the door was unlocked. When was the last time you went over to some random car and tested the door to see if it was unlocked. I can say I've *never* done that to a car I or someone I was with didn't own. To my way of thinking, you could leave a ferrari, doors open, windows down, keys in the ignition, cash 3 inches deep on the floor and the Hope diamond sitting on the passenger seat and you're *still* a thief if you steal it and it's *still* not entrapment if you do. No one's encouraging you to steal that several million dollar pile of someone else's property. You would have been quite willing to do it on your own. Now if a police officer offered to pay you to steal the car for him, or suggested you should for your own benefit, that's entrapment. If its entirely of your own volition, enjoy the cell.

Kill car thieves

[osgeek]

I had my car stolen from me once. When you work your ass off to pay for and maintain a vehicle, you feel totally violated to have some piece of shit come along and take it from you. My car was everything I owned, everything I had worked toward... then some son of a bitch stole it.

I have no mercy for those assholes.