[NY TIMES] A Truckload of Nike Shoes, Left as ‘Bait,’ Stings Chicago

“Operation Trailer Trap” was led by Norfolk Southern Railway, with officers from its own police unit,
...
The operation may not have been the Chicago Police Department’s idea, but it certainly bore the brunt of the backlash.

 

It's almost a stretch to even call this entrapment.

Victim (the railway company folks, keep that in mind) has stuff stolen, repeatedly.
Victim uses their own police and the Chicago police to watch and record stuff being stole the next time, and catches the criminal.

I get that technically, it is entrapment since at this point they got tired of being the victim, so strategically decided where to place the stuff (and what stuff to use) while sitting there watching... but its really borderline.

But watching Sweet Lou continue on is fun. Keep it up good fellow... I rarely venture into the D&D, so this is good entertainment!

 

the backlash in chicago and this thread is unfortunate and distracting from the bigger issues like private police forces using entrapment techniques against private citizens. like seriously how and why is that even possible?!?!

And it could get worse as most big retailers have Loss Prevention Officers which again are private individuals. What's to prevent these folks from "baiting" in their own stores.

Also Wal-mart has an interesting take on it too by taking justice into their own hands by creating a Restorative Justice program. First time offenders are offered anti-shoplifting courses in lieu of charges.

https://www.fool.com/investing/2017/03/28/wal-mart-has-a-unique-way-to-cut-down-on-shoplifti.aspx

All of these are a slippery slope imo but folks want to argue about Chicago PD and Chicago violence instead?!?!

 

If your **** got stolen, you wouldn't even try to protect it next time? Either with insurance, surveillance, guards, etc... Are they not responsible to themselves, their clients, the community they operate in, etc... to protect the assets. Not condoning theft but that's facked up imo. Like a bank opening up in my hood with no protection. That's gonna piss me off because it will attract crime to my hood and provide bad options for desperate folks in my hood. You want to make it right, create a lucrative, unprotected, storage facility of some type in a nice neighborhood too. Equal opportunity entrapment.

 

You have to be from Chicago or have lived in Chicago to get why there is outrage over this.

The relationship between this part of Chicago and the police is famously bad, it is on the news almost daily in Chicago and has been a problem for a long time.

In this particular part of Chicago there have been a number of questionable police shootings... criticism for the police not doing basic things like covering the dead with sheets at the scene of the crime.... the schools are falling apart, it is a really dangerous and bad place to be.

The city of Chicago is extremely segregated and has a very low violent crime rate outside of a small number of neighborhoods that are almost all black and riddled with gangs and have frequent shootings. The attitude by some in the city is that the government and police don't do anything to improve the area, and the attitude of others in the city is that the area is so bad it should be quarantined.

The area is 99% black, it has a poverty rate in approaching 50%. Shootings are extremely common as is gang activity.


So the optics of setting up a sting with NIKE shoes in a truck to capture folks in Englewood stealing is extremely tone deaf.

 

Using Nike shoes to bait poor black people into stealing and arresting them isn't a smart way of going about catching the perps who stole previous trucks.

 

There is so much wrong with the way this is done it's hard to understand how you are defending the use of this tactic.

Prior incidence involved people breaking into trucks in railyards - stealing guns and ammunition. So why park a truck full of Nikes near a basketball court that kids play on?

One of the men who broke is was looking for food - ran after he saw there was none. I mean seriously - that's the hungry criminal you are trying to entrap?

Let's be honest, if you leave a truck or anything for that matter on the street in an impoverished neighborhood someone is going to break into eventually. The Railway company knows this. The idea that there is some kind of organized group that's breaking in to these trucks would be a reason to do this - but to do it in that area and use Nike shoes as the bait next to a basketball court? C'mon, you're not trying to catch the actual thieves, you're just trying to catch anyone and send a message.

And that's why the Railway company apologized, because they were in the wrong. They admit it. Why can't people here?

 

I was defending the tactic with the belief that it was designed to catch the people who either previously stole from the company or were likely to do so at some point. You are now bringing up details that I wasn’t aware of.

While I don’t have much sympathy for anyone who breaks into a vehicle and happily steals the expensive contents they find inside, the way this was setup seemingly just creates more distrust and tension between the people in the community and the law enforcement, with very little positive to show for it.

 

Seems incredibly smart to me! It worked!

 

I tried to find the "new information" referenced. I did find that a man claimed he broke the seal to look for food.

Hard to understand why he was looking for food in a truck that was supposedl using Nikes for bait.

So an accused said he was looking for food. The reports say the truck and boxes were unmarked. Yet, y'all's outrage is on using Nikes as bait.

I'm missing something. Did people know there were Nikes in the truck or not?

 

You are missing the point. You're focusing on the result of what happened (which didn't catch the thieves by the way) - rather than the methods used.

 

I have stated previously that using certain tactics to catch organized criminals makes a lot of sense, but not to prey on humanity's most desperate. There's better ways to spend precious resources.

Let's think about what the railway was really trying to do here. If you had someone break into your railyard and steal from freight, what would be the purpose of putting a truck full of nikes next to a basketball court? First of all, you know what they are thinking - that poor blacks like nikes so they will surely take them - and they were probably hoping that putting it near a basketball court would ensure they get taken once the truck gets open.

The goal wasn't to catch the guys who were stealing from them, it was to send them a message. That hey, we're watching the trucks and trapping and arresting people. They didn't put the trucks in the same location that things got stolen. And if guns and ammunitions were stolen, don't you think their might have been some insider info going on?

It sounds like this railroad company is hiding more about it's motives and there's a deeper story to all this.

 

I'm not sure I'm understanding the outrage here, is the belief that certain people can't help themselves when they see Nike shoes that can be easily stolen? That seems like a pretty racist assumption.

 

So what methods would have you preferred?

 

The Bureau of Justice Statistics - straight from the US Dept of Justice

Starting Page 11, clipped from pg 12

So give all these guys a million and the violent culture goes away? What about OJ, Mayor of Brentwood? You should be able to live contently as a non millionaire in a law abiding society, not use it as an excuse to take out your aggression on others. Chicago's south side is terrible, but the overall picture shows poor blacks commit more crimes than poor whites and asians combined (click the link above). Entitlement and a lack of male figures with the courage to speak up about real truths like yourself, instead content to blame the white man, is a much bigger factor.

 

Take a deep breath here. You are taking individual examples to label an entire race as violent. I understand you feel justified in your views, but that view does make you a racist. And I don't say this as an attack or someone seeking to put you down, but rather someone asking you to take a hard look at things and try to see another perspective.

The statistics don't lie. When you account for socio-economics, race is not a factor is the homicide rate. Rich blacks are just as unlikely to murder as rich whites. Poor whites are as likely to murder as poor blacks.

There's just a lot more poor blacks by percentage.

 

If they had a problem with thieves stealing goods from containers, why did they need a bait truck in the first place? Why not just put greater surveillance on their existing assets? Why not watch and arrest people who were stealing real containers?

Why is it a bright idea to use a bait truck when you already have all the bait out there you need????

 

I am demonstrating how culture and lack of courage by males such as yourself leads to these narratives that allows the aggression and violence to continue.

The statistics don't lie. AA's commit a frighteningly disproportionate amount of violent crime as seen in the link I previously posted.

Population of the US, 315 million.

AA's are 12.3% of the population, and 25% live in poverty. 38.75 million AA's, 9.6 million in poverty.

Whites are 61.4% of the population, and 10% live in poverty. 193.4 million whites, 19.3 million in poverty.

https://www.kff.org/other/state-indicator/poverty-rate-by-raceethnicity/?currentTimeframe=0&sortModel={"colId":"Location","sort":"asc"}

Can you tell me which has a higher number living in poverty, after the statistics show AA's commit more crimes, and far more violent crimes than whites?

 

Crime is correlated with socioeconomics, not race, yet you still try to make it about race. Do you understand what this makes you?