Police Stings: Last Week Tonight with John Oliver (HBO)

0:04 Our main story tonight concerns undercover policing.

0:07 It's not just a staple of movies and TV shows,

0:09 it's something cops do in real life,

0:10 too, to catch people suspected of breaking laws both big and small,

0:14 as this woman discovered.

0:16 Karen Hage plans to fight the $230 ticket she got on Halloween day,

0:20 accused with dozens of other drivers of not stopping

0:23 to let a 6-ft 4 Donald Duck cross the street.

0:27 Then they just told me that I was I was

0:29 getting a ticket because I didn't stop for a pedestrian.

0:32 And it was a crazy It was a duck.

0:34 It was a huge duck.

0:35 It was scary.

0:35 I'm a woman.

0:36 It scared me.

0:38 It's true.

0:39 A cop dressed up as Donald Duck and then

0:42 ticketed people who didn't stop to let him cross.

0:44 AND I GET WHY SHE KEPT DRIVING.

0:46 That ducks are terrifying.

0:48 As we've covered before, all ducks, Donald's included, have a corkscrew penis.

0:53 This isn't the first time that we've used

0:54 this graphic and it will not be the last.

0:58 [laughter]

0:57 Incidentally, Disney, this guy hits public domain in 2030

1:01 and things are going to get interesting then.

1:04 That is just one of many instances where cops have set up so-called stings.

1:08 In In the past four decades, sting operations of all types have become

1:11 a major part of law enforcement in the US.

1:13 There are stings targeting drug dealing,

1:15 sex work, terrorism, tax fraud, drunk driving, poaching,

1:18 and a host host of other crimes including,

1:20 as you've just seen, failure to yield to a gigantic duck.

1:24 And on some level, you probably know that cops like running

1:26 sting operations given just how often they appear on local news.

1:30 Drivers for the online ride service Uber targeted in an LA sting operation.

1:34 [music] Dozens of people have been indicted

1:37 in a criminal sting operation called Operation Hush.

1:40 A 4-month major sting operation ends

1:42 with a Butler County man facing felony drug charges.

1:45 Investigators set up a sting operation orchestrating

1:47 a purchase with the suspected drug traffickers.

1:50 The amount of fentanyl seized, and hear this, could kill the entire

1:54 population of Louisville several times over.

1:58 Wow, is that Anker okay?

2:01 Cops say there was enough fentanyl

2:02 to annihilate this godforsaken town leaving behind nothing

2:06 but a desert of crow-pecked bones future generations

2:08 will only refer to as the shadow place.

2:10 Up next we'll take you inside Louisville's new aquarium which and hear

2:13 this contains enough water to drown us all several times over.

2:19 [laughter] But whilst things are often celebrated as triumphs on the news when

2:21 you start digging into them the details can quickly become questionable at best.

2:26 Take that Uber sting.

2:27 The way operations like those work is an undercover

2:29 officer flags down an Uber maybe says they don't have

2:32 the app or that their phone is dead and offers

2:34 to pay cash for a ride to their destination.

2:36 The trap being ride share drivers are

2:38 subject to arrest if a ride isn't prearranged.

2:41 But that seems like a pretty shitty thing to do given drivers may have

2:44 been bending the rules to help someone who was telling them they were in need.

2:48 And that makes it kind of satisfying to watch this video shot by someone caught

2:52 in a similar sting who then went back

2:54 to the same location to warn other drivers.

2:57 Hey brother, those people are undercover cops.

2:59 I just got a citation for this.

3:01 Oh, really?

3:02 Yeah, they trapped me.

3:04 Yep.

3:06 Good job, guys.

3:08 I'll [applause] see y'all in court.

3:09 Oh, I thought your phone was dead.

3:11 Oh, your phone ain't dead no more, huh?

3:13 Excellent.

3:14 Everything about that is great from the speed

3:16 at which the driver pulls away when he hears the word cops to the cops clear

3:20 disappointment to the glee of the guy taunting them.

3:23 I honestly haven't been this delighted to see a cop

3:25 on camera since that Boston big boy zooted out OF THE SLIDE.

3:33 IT'S STILL SO GOOD.

3:36 It will never not be good.

3:37 If I die with a smile on my face you

3:39 will know that that was the last thing I saw.

3:43 Call that video Paul Rudd cuz it never gets old.

3:47 But if it seems like the cops in that sting weren't so

3:49 much stopping crime as creating it that's sort of the point here.

3:54 And it's honestly the case with more of these operations than you might think.

3:57 So, given all that, tonight let's look at stings.

3:59 Why police love them, how they use them, and who is paying the price.

4:03 And let's start with how they became so popular.

4:05 Stings really took off in the 1970s as police shifted

4:08 from primarily reacting to crime to trying to prevent it.

4:11 That shift coincided with a string

4:13 of Supreme Court decisions that expanded protections

4:15 for defendants against coercive police tactics

4:18 with things like the establishment of Miranda rights.

4:20 As one expert noted, as the police use of coercion has been restricted,

4:25 their use of deception has increased.

4:28 The first large-scale sting operation began in 1975.

4:31 And in it, DC police created a fake mafia-run

4:33 fencing operation to lure people into selling them stolen property.

4:36 And officers really got into their roles,

4:39 giving themselves {quote} Italian names like Angelo Lasagna and Rico Rigatoni.

4:45 Here is a photo of them.

4:46 It is a picture that screams, "The only Italian word I know is lasagna."

4:52 They even padded out their backstory with lines like,

4:54 "We got a stiff in the trunk.

4:55 What do we do?" To which Rico Rigatoni would reply, "Toss a him in the freeze."

5:01 [laughter] They also offered targets meatballs, telling them, and I quote,

5:03 "You'll hurt Pasquale's feeling if you no have a meatball." Ultimately,

5:08 they wrapped up the sting by inviting everyone who'd sold

5:10 goods to them to a giant party where a police sergeant

5:12 played Don Corleone and had attendees kiss his ring as he

5:16 told them they were under arrest while one agent sang,

5:19 "When the moon hits your eye like a big

5:20 piece of pie." As he put handcuffs on them, a wow, that's a lot OF STEREOTYPE.

5:27 BUT, THAT STING was viewed as such a success,

5:31 the federal government started giving local police money to emulate it.

5:34 And departments around the country began doing their own versions.

5:38 And the appeal of stings was obvious.

5:40 As this news report from 1979 explains,

5:43 catching people on tape makes for very easy prosecutions.

5:47 Around the country, officials have had

5:49 great success in court with sting evidence.

5:51 In Memphis, all but eight of the 1,500 sting defendants pleaded guilty,

5:56 and every one of those who chose a trial

5:58 was convicted when the jury saw the tapes.

6:01 Right, and that does make sense, doesn't it?

6:02 Cuz once you have someone on tape,

6:05 it is usually pretty much game over with one notable exception.

6:09 And police have sometimes gotten way too

6:11 into the playing dress-up part of stings.

6:13 In Baton Rouge in the '90s,

6:14 some cops wore blackface in a sting operation, bragging to local reporters,

6:18 "Not only do they not know we're cops,

6:20 they don't even know we're white." And first of all, oh yes, they did.

6:25 No one in the history of blackface has ever pulled it off.

6:29 And also, you just cannot convince me that a white cop could speak

6:31 for more than 20 seconds without identifying himself as both white and a cop.

6:36 And things as stings became more common,

6:39 courts have been reluctant to set limits

6:40 on what police are allowed to do in them.

6:42 As one analysis puts it,

6:44 "There are no clear legal limitations on the length of the operation,

6:47 the intimacy of the relationships formed, the degree of deception used,

6:50 the degree of temptation offered,

6:52 and the number of times it is offered." All of which

6:54 leaves the government with a nearly limitless ability to deceive.

6:58 And some law enforcement will take that as an opportunity

7:00 to rack up easy arrests and make some headlines.

7:03 Take Sheriff Grady Judd in Florida.

7:05 His department's constantly boasting about running online stings,

7:09 often fishing for arrests concerning sex

7:11 offenses with flashy names like Cyber Guardian,

7:14 Naughty Not Nice Too, and Child Protector Too.

7:18 Which sound less like police operations and more like Steven Seagal movies.

7:22 And while you'd hope they targeted

7:24 predators looking to engage in criminal activity,

7:27 when a local station dug into the tactics Judd was using,

7:29 they found that wasn't exactly the case.

7:32 You think you know how these stings go down.

7:35 Cops post an ad for an underage teen, wait for predators to respond,

7:39 then arrest them when they show up in person.

7:41 If I had Grady's world, they'd all go to prison.

7:43 But what so many of our local law enforcement leaders are not telling you is

7:47 that they've had to try harder and harder

7:49 over the years to trick men into showing up.

7:51 10 Investigates has learned through court documents and arrest

7:54 reports that law enforcement is now reaching out

7:56 themselves to young men who did nothing more

7:59 than post an ad on a traditional dating site.

8:01 Cops form rapport, then switch their age,

8:04 and try to trick the sometimes hesitant men to keep on talking.

8:07 They had to call them.

8:08 I sat on the phone for an hour with a grown

8:12 woman who was talking to me in a very seductive manner.

8:16 He was 22 when he had his first and only run-in with the law.

8:20 He thought he was talking to a 26-year-old online who even sent this photo,

8:24 wedding ring and all.

8:25 But after baiting him in, she switched her age from 26 to 13.

8:29 Joseph thought she had to have been kidding,

8:31 so he took her up on her offer to meet.

8:33 I walked into a house and was thrown into handcuffs.

8:35 He's serving 2 years of house arrest,

8:37 then the equivalent of a life sentence since he's now labeled a sexual offender.

8:42 Well, that really doesn't feel like a slam dunk for justice there, does it?

8:46 He posted an ad online looking for an adult,

8:48 then talked to an adult on an adult site,

8:51 and then got understandably confused when

8:52 that adult suddenly reversed big to themselves.

8:56 Especially given he'd already been sent this photo,

8:57 which is obviously of a grown woman.

8:59 Wedding ring aside, she's got the face of someone who knows what a Roth IRA is.

9:04 But while the crimes in these operations can be made up,

9:07 the punishments can be very real.

9:10 And not just when it comes to sex stings.

9:12 The ATF for years did so-called stash house stings,

9:15 which where basically undercover agents would recruit a group of people to rob

9:18 a non-existent stash house full of drugs

9:21 with the promise of huge amounts of money.

9:23 Over the years, they arrested over a thousand people in these sorts of stings,

9:26 like these men who walked right into the trap.

9:29 Stun grenades startled three young men near Chicago as police move in.

9:33 They thought they were going to rob a drug stash house.

9:36 Instead, they got busted.

9:37 A fake scenario set up by the ATF to get hardened criminals off the street.

9:43 Yeah, they lured a bunch of people into a car

9:45 under false pretenses and then sprang a nasty surprise on them.

9:48 It's It's almost as bad as accidentally hailing the cash cab.

9:51 Under no circumstances, by the way.

9:53 Do you hear me?

9:54 The only way I'm being transported in that thing is

9:56 if you kill me and stuff me in the trunk.

10:00 And what police will claim things like

10:01 those catch people who commit violent crimes anyway, I'm not so sure about that.

10:07 Reporters looked into that case and found that this guy

10:09 not only had no convictions for violent offenses,

10:12 he clearly didn't know what he was doing.

10:15 USA Today found this small-time criminal in this case showed

10:18 up with a rusty gun and bullets that didn't fit.

10:21 His punishment, looking at 25 years in jail.

10:25 Yeah, apparently that gun was so old it'd be made sometime before World War I.

10:30 And a rusty old gun with bullets that don't fit

10:33 clearly shouldn't justify sending a man to prison for 25 years.

10:36 At best, it'd be the comic relief character in a Pixar movie

10:39 where a bunch of talking guns learn the value of found family.

10:44 And the thing is, judges may not have a lot of room for leniency in cases

10:47 like that thanks to mandatory minimum sentencing laws

10:50 which trigger based on the severity of the crime.

10:53 And because the ATF's making the crime up in the first place,

10:57 they can make sure it meets mandatory minimums by inventing drug amounts

11:00 that trigger long sentences or pressuring targets

11:03 into doing things that increase the penalty.

11:05 In one sting out of Wichita, ATF agents suggested the felon take a shotgun,

11:09 saw it off, and bring it back to them,

11:11 even providing instructions on how to do it.

11:14 That sawed-off gun then allowed them to charge

11:16 the man with a more serious crime.

11:18 But if you think, "Well, hold on.

11:19 Isn't all this entrapment?" You would think so,

11:23 but it turns out the legal bar for proving entrapment is incredibly high.

11:27 One big reason is that in court prosecutors simply you show

11:30 that you're doing something you'd have been predisposed to do anyway.

11:33 And depending on your case,

11:35 things like prior convictions and drug addiction could qualify.

11:38 Often, all they have to show is that you were willing to commit the crime.

11:42 But a key reason people can be willing to do

11:44 that is because they've just been offered a lot of money,

11:47 all of which makes you feel pretty predatory

11:49 that these things can actively target low-income communities.

11:53 In California, federal judge a federal judge even

11:55 accused ATF agents of trolling poor neighborhoods for suspects.

12:00 Investigations have also found stings disproportionately target minorities.

12:03 Now, one that looked at 7 years of stash house stings

12:06 in the greater Chicago area found that of the people charged in them,

12:09 92% were black or Hispanic.

12:12 And when a retired ATF agent was asked to explain why they chose certain areas,

12:16 his answer wasn't great.

12:19 Why do a stash house investigation in Englewood as opposed to some other place?

12:24 Well, we don't.

12:24 We do we do them anywhere that we find that there's

12:27 people that are willing to participate in that level of violence.

12:30 Those are people we're going to want to talk to.

12:33 [music] Again, it's this is a killer be killed proposition.

12:34 It doesn't matter if you're in Englewood,

12:36 the [music] West Side, Detroit, New Orleans, anywhere.

12:42 Any community where we can find those violent people within that community,

12:46 then we'll provide them with this opportunity.

12:48 Huh, what a fascinating off the top of your head list that was.

12:53 Englewood, the West Side, Detroit, or New Orleans,

12:56 all fun fact, majority black areas.

12:58 He's only one step away from adding Wakanda to that list.

13:02 And disproportionate targeting has been baked

13:04 into stings from the very beginning.

13:06 Remember the fake mafia guys buying fenced goods?

13:09 It rounded up about 120 people, although most were not experienced traffickers,

13:13 but unemployed black men who'd heard about the high prices

13:16 being offered at the warehouse and had decided to steal something.

13:19 Fast forward to 2018 and law enforcement in Chicago were using a bait

13:23 truck that they filled with Nike

13:24 sneakers and parked in an impoverished neighborhood,

13:27 something that justifiably infuriated community members.

13:31 Instead of y'all chasing crime, you trying to create crime.

13:34 On this YouTube video posted by anti-crime activist Charles McKenzie,

13:38 outraged residents called that entrapment.

13:41 Y'all better not y'all kids.

13:42 It's a base truck, man.

13:43 Big man.

13:44 They come get you.

13:46 I think this is bogus and y'all shouldn't be entrapping black kids.

13:50 Yeah.

13:50 Yeah, it's real crimes being committed.

13:52 Why do you got to do this?

13:52 Why don't you go preach to somebody else?

13:54 Huh?

13:55 Put this in your neighborhood.

13:57 Yeah, fair points.

13:58 I know it's a little hard to tell what the cop dropped on the ground there,

14:01 but from context, I'm going to just guess it's his dignity.

14:04 But it is not just racial or economic targeting.

14:08 Stings can also sweep up people who might be easier

14:10 for cops to manipulate due to mental illness or disabilities.

14:13 Just listen to these parents of an autistic

14:15 teenager in California tell the story

14:16 of how some happy news from school quickly took a turn for the worse.

14:21 He told me that he made a new friend in art class,

14:23 and I was completely amazed by that.

14:25 It seemed like they were having these great

14:28 conversations back and forth or what seemed

14:30 typical for a teenager because there was

14:33 such a furious amount of texting going on.

14:36 But those texts weren't just friendly teenage banter.

14:38 Instead, their son's new friend was pressuring him to buy marijuana.

14:42 And this new friend wasn't just a teenager,

14:44 he was an undercover cop who went by the name of Daniel Briggs.

14:47 It took the Snodgrasses son 3 weeks to buy

14:50 half a joint of pot off a homeless man.

14:52 A few weeks later, armed policemen walked into his classroom

14:55 and arrested him in front of his peers.

14:57 22 students were arrested in the drug sting.

14:59 Most of them were special needs students.

15:02 That is appalling.

15:04 And for what it's worth,

15:05 their son only got the joint because his cop friend told him

15:08 he was always in trouble with his strict mom and was super stressed,

15:11 that's why he really needed it.

15:13 So, it seems that cop was truly living by Mr.

15:15 Rogers' famous advice, look for the helpers,

15:18 so you can arrest them for weed possession.

15:20 And in the sign of just how much the media uncritically laps these stories up,

15:25 this is how those arrests got covered on the local news.

15:29 Riverside County Sheriff's deputies have smashed an illegal drug

15:32 ring operating out of three high schools in Temecula.

15:36 22 students were taken into custody.

15:38 It was like 21 Jump Street,

15:39 like Deputies say during the investigation they seized all types of drugs,

15:43 meth, cocaine, LSD, and ecstasy.

15:46 Chaparral High School also had students escorted by police off campus.

15:50 This picture shows one of five arrests made there.

15:53 That kid on the screen there was the one who spent weeks trying

15:56 to buy half a joint for his friend because he was worried about him.

15:59 But I can see why the news didn't lead with that angle.

16:02 Cops bust massive drug ring is a much

16:04 cooler story than cops manipulate {slash} arrest autistic teen.

16:08 And it goes way beyond school drug busts.

16:11 An investigation into another ATF practice of setting up fake stores

16:14 to buy drugs and guns found

16:16 them repeatedly manipulating people with disabilities.

16:18 In one case, agents set up a fake smoke shop in Portland and paid a 19-year-old

16:23 who was mentally disabled and his friend

16:25 to promote their store by, and this is true,

16:27 getting a large tattoo on their necks of the fake shop's emblem,

16:31 which was a giant squid smoking a joint, which is utterly despicable.

16:36 And when a judge later reprimanded the government lawyer for that, I'd

16:40 argue she did it in far too casual a manner.

16:43 But the agent it was government money that was used to pay for the tattoos.

16:47 I believe so.

16:48 I Could you send a message back to uh was it eight Which agency was doing it?

16:53 Uh ATF.

16:54 And uh it's really a bad idea.

16:58 Um nothing unlawful about it, but uh not a good idea.

17:02 Not a good idea?

17:03 Look, there was a time to be polite,

17:05 but finding out agents just used taxpayer money

17:07 to tattoo a teen with mental disabilities is not it.

17:11 In fact, I looked up that exact situation in Emily Post's Book of Etiquette,

17:14 and her advice just says,

17:16 "Fuck those sideways with a rusty fork." I didn't say that, Emily posted it.

17:20 So, you know it's official.

17:22 And if it wasn't enough for cops to prey on disabled or desperate people,

17:26 there is one more way they can make things easy on themselves with stings.

17:29 And that is by using confidential informants or CIs.

17:32 Basically, people they convinced to go undercover on their behalf.

17:36 Sometimes by paying them,

17:37 but often by taking people they've already arrested and pressuring

17:40 them to work as CIs to obtain their freedom.

17:43 As this ex-cop readily explains,

17:46 "Using these sources can really speed things up when it comes to making

17:49 a case." If you had not been able personally to use confidential informants,

17:54 would you have been as effective?

17:57 Nowhere near as effective.

17:58 You really feel you need this?

17:59 Oh, I know I would not.

18:01 I may have to watch a house for days or weeks to establish probable cause.

18:06 My informant goes in and makes a buy out

18:08 of it and I have my probable cause in 5 minutes.

18:10 Look, I will concede that man in particular

18:13 is going to have a hard time going undercover

18:15 because if you showed me that guy and gave

18:17 me three guesses what he does for a living,

18:19 they'd be in order: cop, cop, and guy who plays cop in porn.

18:25 And the appeal for police in CIs is obvious.

18:28 They're people who may already be known and trusted in their community.

18:30 And crucially, as civilians, they're subject to even fewer rules

18:34 and restrictions than cops regarding conduct during investigation.

18:38 But there are some obvious issues here.

18:39 First, because CIs can be paid or working under the threat of jail time,

18:43 they can be under huge pressure to produce whatever info cops need,

18:47 whether it is reliable or not.

18:49 Meaning they might well fabricate information.

18:52 Also, cops can look the other way at crimes their CIs have

18:55 committed or even continue to commit while they are working for them.

18:58 And finally, if you're thinking pressuring untrained civilians into doing

19:01 the job of undercover cops feels like it could end badly,

19:05 you're right about that.

19:06 There've been multiple stories of CIs being assaulted

19:08 or murdered in the the of working for the police.

19:11 In fact, as this expert points out, there are a whole host of issues CIs raise,

19:15 but the limited nature of disclosure on these operations means

19:19 we don't know the full extent of any of them.

19:21 There is no law enforcement entity or official

19:25 in this country that knows how many informants there are,

19:29 how many crimes they solve, and how many crimes are tolerated by law

19:35 enforcement by the informants that they run.

19:38 Exactly.

19:39 And it's probably not a great sign

19:41 that we have less information about confidential informants

19:44 than we do about how many toilets Meghan Trainor and her spy kid husband have.

19:48 And it's not just information on confidential You know,

19:50 I don't think I was actually clear about that.

19:51 They have two.

19:52 They have two toilets right next to each other so

19:55 they can piss and presumably together without breaking eye contact.

20:00 That is from their old house.

20:01 They've since moved and are opting for a quote knees-to-knees setup.

20:07 I don't like knowing this about them, either,

20:09 but at least we're on the same page now.

20:13 [laughter] Anyway, it's not just information on confidential informants.

20:15 Public data on stings in general is extremely limited,

20:18 partly because they're usually not subject to public disclosure laws.

20:22 And that, mixed with a near limitless ability for cops

20:25 to target anyone they want is a truly dangerous combination.

20:29 And if you want to see everything that we've discussed tonight in one place,

20:32 just look at counterterrorism stings.

20:33 After 9/11, the FBI went hard in trying

20:36 to preemptively stop the next big terror attack.

20:38 One hallmark of this involves stings targeted at Muslim communities.

20:42 And these cases resulted in a lot of convictions.

20:45 A survey two years ago found that out of 992 terrorism defendants since 9/11,

20:50 just three have been acquitted and four

20:52 have seen their charges dropped or dismissed,

20:54 giving the Justice Department a near perfect record

20:56 of conviction when it comes to terrorism cases.

20:59 But, that same report also found that the majority

21:02 of defendants had no direct connection to terrorist organizations at all,

21:06 and over a third had been caught up in FBI stings.

21:10 And some of those were incredibly dicey,

21:13 like the case of these four men in Newburgh,

21:14 New York, who the FBI claimed plan to attack synagogues and an airport.

21:18 And at the time, they trumpeted the arrests as a huge deal.

21:22 We have breaking news.

21:23 The FBI says it has thwarted a terror plot.

21:26 Federal investigators say the suspects are four

21:29 men with a shared hatred for America.

21:31 According to the FBI, the four men intended to carry out their plan today.

21:37 The good news here is that our FBI [music]

21:39 and our NYPD did a very, very good job.

21:43 The fact that we've been able to penetrate these groups

21:47 early on, they were being monitored for close to a year.

21:50 This is truly a a textbook example

21:53 of how a a major investigation should be conducted.

21:58 That sounds pretty impressive, doesn't it?

22:00 But you should know, while friend of the Bayleys, Chuck Schumer there,

22:02 was bragging that the FBI was able

22:04 to penetrate the group very early on, the reason

22:07 for that is they're the ones who put the group together in the first place.

22:11 The entire plan was concocted by the FBI.

22:14 So, I guess it really was textbook if the textbook was

22:16 called how to solve crimes when you're the one doing them.

22:20 The truth is, none of the four men arrested were militants.

22:22 They were, however, impoverished individuals,

22:24 one of whom had severe mental health issues.

22:26 They were recruited by an informant who promised

22:29 them huge financial inducements to carry out the plot,

22:31 including $250,000, free holidays, and expensive cars.

22:35 And that informant then did everything for the men,

22:38 from getting the missile and bombs to teaching them the tenets of radical Islam.

22:42 One of their attorneys actually summed up the whole situation pretty succinctly.

22:46 The government conceded at trial that these four defendants never had a plan,

22:51 never had done this before,

22:53 had no technology ability to this, had no access to these kind of weapons,

22:57 had no access to the money of this to make these kind of bombs,

23:01 had no access to terrorists to come up with the ideas,

23:03 had no access to anything.

23:06 Even cars, these four defendants were no more capable

23:10 of firing a Stinger missile or creating a bomb than,

23:14 you know, Tony the Tiger could make a bomb Frosty Flakes box.

23:18 Yeah, that is both infuriating and completely true right up to his claim

23:23 about Tony the Tiger because I I know this isn't the point.

23:26 Tony the Tiger is a fictional character,

23:28 therefore in his world he is capable of anything including bomb making.

23:31 Now, do I believe the good folks at Kellogg's

23:35 would put a bomb maker on their cereal box?

23:37 No.

23:38 But could Tony conceptually build a bomb in the universe he inhabits?

23:42 Of course he could and by that logic,

23:44 you can make the case that he was actually more equipped

23:46 to do terrorism than these people the FBI railroaded for no reason.

23:51 Ultimately, the men were sentenced in 2011

23:53 to a mandatory minimum of 25 years in prison.

23:56 Although 3 years ago the judge in their case granted a motion for compassionate

23:59 release calling their conduct heinous but acknowledging

24:02 the real lead conspirator was the United States.

24:06 Which depressingly is pretty much modern world history in a sentence.

24:10 And you can see just how tempting it is for law enforcement

24:13 to do this especially whenever there is a panic about a certain population.

24:18 More recently it has been immigrants.

24:20 You may remember when Trump and the media were freaking out about that video

24:22 that supposedly proved Tren de Aragua

24:24 gangs were taking over Colorado apartment complexes.

24:27 It was undeniably a frightening image.

24:30 And in the wake of that, the ATF ran a sting operation in that town

24:34 with undercover agents offering large sums of money

24:36 to Venezuelan immigrants to procure them guns and drugs.

24:39 And last summer, DOJ officials called a press

24:41 conference to proudly show off the results.

24:44 In a matter of minutes, we learned this was far more than

24:47 a news conference about arrests, drugs, and guns.

24:51 The 10-month undercover operation produced 30 arrests including three described

24:56 as TDA leaders along with five other alleged TDA members.

25:00 The others labeled as actively involved in TDA criminal activity.

25:06 TDA has brought its terrorism to the United States.

25:09 TDA is real.

25:10 It is dangerous, and we have made prosecuting

25:12 TDA a priority in the District of Colorado.

25:15 Okay, so there was a lot to unpack there

25:17 from the elaborate work that went into that massive

25:19 gun diorama to what is in those baggies

25:22 because it looks to me like Pink Panther jizz.

25:24 But the thing is, as one reporter since put it,

25:27 the results of that sting in court have failed to back up the hype

25:31 because filings suggest most of the people

25:33 charged weren't actually gang members at all,

25:35 but a loose collection of impoverished and desperate

25:37 immigrants drawn in by offers of cash.

25:39 In fact, when it comes to those firearms,

25:42 it's worth knowing many of the drugs and guns

25:44 weren't in the defenders' possession before the government got involved.

25:48 So, the feds basically dangled money in front of a bunch of desperate people,

25:51 said, "Go get us guns." And they did it.

25:54 And all that really proves is that for enough money,

25:56 you can basically get people to do anything,

25:58 which not for nothing was, I believe,

26:00 also the official slogan of the Riyadh Comedy Festival.

26:03 The point here is the long history of police stings has far too often left

26:10 us with a bunch of fake crimes

26:12 from manufactured criminals resulting in very real punishments.

26:15 And look, I am not saying the crimes

26:17 you've seen people arrested for tonight don't happen.

26:19 Of course, they do.

26:21 People do sell drugs in schools,

26:22 traffic guns, plan terror attacks, and molest children.

26:25 And those crimes should be investigated.

26:28 The problem with stings is they're an easy

26:31 way for police to rack up arrests and sell

26:33 the illusion that they're addressing these crimes even

26:36 when that may not actually be the case.

26:38 Remember that county in Florida where Grady Judd loves

26:40 to hold press conferences about his online sex stings?

26:43 It's currently being sued by this woman who came to them at age

26:46 12 because you've been sexually abused by her adoptive father for years.

26:50 The investigation by Judd's Department was an absolute disgrace.

26:55 The detective who handled her case failed to collect

26:57 key evidence and as her supervisor later wrote,

27:00 conducted her interview with the girl

27:01 using inappropriate questions and statements.

27:03 Judge Department ultimately wound up charging the girl with giving

27:07 false information to a law enforcement officer for which he

27:09 was placed on probation and also made to write these letters

27:12 of apology to both her abuser and the sheriff's office.

27:16 It was only after she was abused again during

27:19 which she had the presence of mind to take photos

27:21 and video of the incident on her phone that her abuser

27:23 was finally arrested and sentenced to 17 years in prison,

27:27 which is clearly infuriating.

27:29 She basically had to do that department's work for them.

27:33 And it makes you think that maybe Grady

27:35 Judd's office would have been a little better

27:36 at protecting an actual child if they weren't

27:39 spending all day pretending to be one online.

27:42 Now, Judd never responded to us when we asked him about this, but apparently,

27:46 I still have to tell you that they've

27:47 called that woman's lawsuit frivolous and baseless.

27:50 And I don't know, man.

27:52 When you've made a literal child write a letter of apology to her rapist,

27:55 I wouldn't be throwing the word frivolous around.

27:58 I might just shut the up about everything for the rest of my life,

28:02 but I guess reasonable people can agree to disagree there.

28:08 [applause] And when you put all this together,

28:10 it's hard not to conclude that stings

28:11 might actually be doing more harm than good.

28:14 So, what do we do?

28:16 Well, I would argue at the very least cops should be doing much less of them

28:20 and ideally none of the stings where

28:21 the goal is basically find anybody for anything.

28:25 As one expert put it, if we're going to do stings,

28:27 they should be narrowly focused on individuals who

28:29 law enforcement have credible evidence maybe planning to commit

28:32 a serious or violent crime imminently or who've already

28:35 done so and are planning to do so again, which seems right to me.

28:39 Because as it stands,

28:41 police seem utterly addicted to stings even though for what it's worth,

28:45 making up imaginary crimes and arresting people

28:47 for them isn't law enforcement, it is theater.

28:50 In fact, the one reform that might actually be within all our control right

28:54 now is to try and remember that we are all the audience for that theater.

28:58 So, if you are serving on a jury, or work in the media,

29:02 or you see a story on TV about a sting operation,

29:04 it's worth questioning what role law enforcement played

29:07 in creating the crime that they just supposedly stopped.

29:11 Honestly, we first started looking at this story a few years ago,

29:13 and it has changed how I viewed every sting story that's made headlines since.

29:18 Remember when that group of men were

29:19 arrested for trying to kidnap Gretchen Whitmer?

29:22 Guess how many confidential informants seemed to help that plot along.

29:25 I'll give you a clue, it is a lot more than you would like.

29:28 And you don't have to sympathize with these men or agree

29:31 with their views to wonder if that plan could have

29:34 even gotten off the ground if there hadn't been as many

29:36 as a dozen confidential informants involved and two undercover federal agents.

29:41 The point here is, cops have been getting away with stings for far too long,

29:45 and we just cannot let this slide anymore.

29:48 In fact, there's really only one type

29:50 of cop sliding that I'm completely on board with.

29:54 And I think we all know what it is.

30:02 [cheering] you, Paul Thomas Anderson.

30:03 THAT IS THE BEST PICTURE OF ANY GODDAMN YEAR right there.