Sting operation
From Free net encyclopedia
In law enforcement, a sting operation is an operation designed to catch a person committing a crime by means of deception. A typical sting will have a law-enforcement officer or cooperative member of the public play a role as criminal partner or potential victim and go along with a suspect's actions to gather evidence of the suspect's wrongdoing.
Examples:
- Purchasing illegal drugs to catch a supplier
- Deploying a bait car to catch an auto thief
- Posing as a client to catch a prostitute or pimp / escort agency
- Posing as a prostitute to catch a client
- Posing as someone who likes child pornography to catch a supplier
- Posing as a supplier of child pornography to lure a pedophile
- Posing as a child in a chat room to lure a pedophile
- Police arranging someone under the legal drinking age to ask an adult to buy alcoholic beverage for him or her (May 2004, Indio, California [1])
- posing as hit man to catch gang members or wanted murderers.
Law-enforcement may have to be careful not to provoke the commission of a crime by someone who would not normally be inclined to do so. In common law jurisdictions, the defendant may invoke the defense of entrapment.
- police role playing as Irish Republican drug runners to pressurise suspects with threats and misinformation (amounting to torture) hoping to extract information about a serious criminal offence ("OPERATION CENTURY". Essex Police. England. 1996).
A related matter is parking a car as a honey trap for car thieves, etc. In computing, a honeypot can be used to gain information about a potential cracker.
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