Almost out the door on vacation, but I had to post on this. For too long the FBI and other law enforcement agencies have been allowed by courts to create crimes and then solve them. Law enforcement has no business setting up such entrapment sting operations. Entrapment is a hard defense to win before either judges or juries, so this odious tactic has flourished. Hopefully this will be the beginning of getting law enforcement out of the crime creation business.
IMO stings have their place but should be rarely used. If it induces someone to commit a crime they would not otherwise commit, it is contrary to basic justice. The origin of the crime should be wholly in the mind of the target. Not an agency of government.
The late Gottfried Dietze was disgusted by the use of agents provacateurs by federal law enforcement. I’m not sure he thought any of it was legitimate.
The geographic jurisdictions of local police are suboptimally drawn, departments are commonly under manned, the deployment of manpower is commonly inefficient, and low morale is commonly an issue. OTOH, these forces deal with real crimes and real threats to public order. I have a suspicion that many local prosecutors are unscrupulous and / or are ICNBW narcissists, but their plates are too full to engege in white whale hunts against innocent people and minor offenders except in horrid ‘high profile’ cases.
It seems to me there is a crevasse separating federal law enforcement and state and local law enforcement. The ‘three felonies a day’ problem is, as far as I can see, a problem with federal prosecutors and law enforcement. The FBI is now so untrustworthy that the only solution is institutional death. IMO, we’d benefit if the verbiage in the federal penal code were dramatically reduced and the federal sentencing schedule recalibrated.
Of course, prosecutors and judges are almost comprehensively immune to sanction for their abuses.
While we’re at it, what’s the utility of grand juries?
This sounds like what the FBI did in the plot to kidnap Gretchen Whitmore
No small amount of this tactic went into Jan 6 which took normally benign trespass and made it into felonies for the unlucky opponents of the police state.
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My trust in any Federal agency is now just about at zero.
FBI, below zero.