Stimulus checks lure 76 Floridians to their arrest

It's sad that so many criminals are common criminals!

Greed is always the under performing crooks downfall.

There is no such thing as a free lunch. The sad thing is it will cost the tax payers 35.00 dollars a day to incarcerate these fools.

They certainly couldn't have been making money at crime if they dropped what they were doing to pick up a paltry $600.00 dollar stimulus check.

Wow is this economy bad or is this economy bad!

failure to pay child support

What happens when we that pay child support can't get jobs? We get arrested right? Than we cost the people that have jobs more money and when we get out of jail with no job and can't get one because we have a record. Now we go back to jail it is a vicious cycle. Unemployment is at an all time high. So than how are we supposed to pay?

Ill tell you how I pay mine I joined the army.
Hmm seams like a good recruiting tool join the military we need bodies and you need money.

Just for those claiming entrapment. You are wrong; entrapment would be if the police acted in a manner that would get the average person to commit a crime so that they could arrest them.

In this case they simply tricked so people who had an arrest warrant to come to a place to be arrested. They might do this because as another mentioned the criminals might be using an address to receive mail but are not living there.


Simply put this is a good way to get criminals that might otherwise still be on the streets. If they no longer have a warrant they are released, they might be mad but they are still free. Better to be slightly mad than to be butt raped by you jail mate. Besides what are these people really doing that would qualify them for a stimulus check? They have no reason to be mad if they have done nothing to deserve a check.

Raist

reply to post by ashnomadonte


I agree there needs to be some mandatory job placement for those who get arrested for not paying. Maybe if not the military they could do city work such as cleaning parks or water ways for pay. Child support could then be pretax deducted from their check.

The whole support issue though is a bitter pill often times. The men claim the women are spending the money on other things and many do. Also many men do not pay period leaving the woman to fend for herself. It would be nice if both could face their responsibilities and care about the child before themselves.


Raist

I have but one word for this police tactic.

"Entrapment"

I am not a lawyer but this is what it seems to me.

reply to post by Cyprex


Great idea.
It takes a lot of man hours to track some people down. Much cheaper this way to just encourage the people to come in.

And they did it.

Classic.

Originally posted by Amaxium
I have but one word for this police tactic.

"Entrapment"

I am not a lawyer but this is what it seems to me.

As Raist pointed out before it is not entrapment.They are not getting a average citizen to commit a crime they wouldn't do just to get an arrest.

If a check of a 'Stimulus encashment' of $663 is enough to get in low level wanted criminal , how much would it have to be to get some like a 'Madoff' in to be arrested? Or do you think they'd send in someone else to collect it on their behalf?

reply to post by indy0725


At least someone is smart enough to listen, thanks.


Again for those suggesting this is entrapment please do a search on the legal definition of entrapment and then report back to this thread. You will find you are way off on your definition of entrapment.

God forbid if the police arrest people with warrants

With all the sympathy for criminals it is no wonder why the country is in the mess it is in.

Raist

reply to post by Amaxium


You are both right and wrong.

You are right that you are not a lawyer. You are wrong in saying this is entrapment. Look up the legal definition.

Raist

[edit on 9/1/09 by Raist]

Originally posted by Raist
Again for those suggesting this is entrapment please do a search on the legal definition of entrapment and then report back to this thread. You will find you are way off on your definition of entrapment.

Amen to that.

Every day of the year, plaincloth detectives buy drugs from suspected dealers and routinely get those dealers busted. They also pose as johns and get convictions. This particular case is nowhere near entrapment compared to these two.

I'm actually all for using criminals' own stupidity and ignorance against them.

If you're wanted, there's a high likelihood that you know you're wanted. If the people you're wanted by then tell you, "hey, we want to give you some cash", and you actually show up, well that's you're own problem. They could have put up a sign in the parking lot that said "Hey, you're walking into a trap.", and they still would have proceeded.

What the police, in this case, have succeeded in doing, is raising the average level of intelligence in their local communities.

I'm for it as long as they are criminals. after all having an expired registration is a criminal offense in Florida. the laws are draconian, and a sheriff told me If you not a criminal you have nothing to worry about - In Florida... well, that statement is not true. The State of Florida abuses its power. It uses the courts as a cash machine instead of Justice Machine.
so its always in the back of my head is this a extorision or was a crime committed here. I for locking up criminals those that have a victim that is. the other stuff ... I try to stay away from - its like trying to fix a rotten roof, and you cant get a permit to remove the old.

The ignorance on the board today is off of the charts!

You think you can tell a dead beat dad from a loving dad who's had had their own children taken away by the state, (IN MOST CASES WITHOUT EVEN HAVING A HEARING) in favor of the mother who is given nothing but child support for treating dad as a criminal.

You guys need to do some research and leave your ignorance at the front door.

Originally posted by octotom
My only question is, if the cops knew the criminals' addresses to send them the phony stimulus check bit, why didn't they just go and arrest them?

There are literally thousands of warrants, everyone who skips out on a traffic ticket or misses a court date has a warrant. Warrants in a particular RD will spit off the JDIC by the dozens... you would literally need a battalion of dedicated "warrant officers" who could MOSTLY work only during the day.

Many misdemeanor chickencrap warrants in the system are only endorsed for "daytime service"... police perform a "service" when they come to your door specifically for the warrant. If you refuse to open the door, or exit your residence, the police, in general, can't force entry without a court order or "exigent" circumstances. Do we want cops demolishing peoples doors and kicking their ass to jail for skipping a stop sign cite?

Day watch patrol would have no time for radio calls / pro-active police work if warrants were a priority. Plus, warrants are mostly a local issue; a patrol cop in Beverly Hills isn't going to care much about booking a $500 Santa Barbra County Sheriffs traffic ticket warrant.. many times the dept issuing the warrant wont spend the $$ or resources to recover the "wanted".. SBSO isn't going to dispatch a patrol car to drive 10 hours round trip to get Joe the alleged stop sign runner.

Depts have various warrant policies, some wont book out of county misd warrants / or anything under $10K.

Given the goofy rules / red tape and general weakness of most warrants which are "FTA" (failure to appear) for traffic violations, stings like this work out ok. Hopefully they're targeting dirtbags wanted for serious crimes.

I call fraud.

Just my take.

Good idea? No. While it is easy (and popular) to say "anything to get the bad guys', does someone want to define a "bad guy"? I personally know people who are in prison on drug charges even though they personally never used rugs, never sold drugs, but they happened to befriend someone who did... and got caught with something in their "possession" they were unaware of.

I also know people who are (as another posted commented) in and out opf jail regularly because they were sentenced to child support when they were in good health, then had some medical problems and couldn't make enough anymore to pay the child support. I know a couple of truck drivers who were accused of being delinquent on their child support payments (they claim they paid the ex directly and then she lied about it; I don't dispute them), and as a consequence of this lost their CDL and were unable to drive. Unable to drive means they can't make the money they used to. That means they can't make the high payments. That means they go to jail. That means they can't make anything. that means they can't make any payments. Anyone else see a pattern here?

These are not "bad people". They are people who are at odds with our legal system. They are (supposedly) innocent until proven guilty. If they are guilty, it is of being in the wrong place at the same time, or of acting on good faith.

These people do not need to even be in the system, much less be tricked with fraudulent promises. Yes, I said fraudulent, because that is how I see this. Raist is right; it's not entrapment because they were not coerced into breaking the law, only into identifying themselves to the police. But they were promised a sum of money under false pretenses, they were then met by someone pretending to be someone they were not, and they were finally detained due to this deception... apparently at least one was detained needlessly.

In another respect, Raist is wrong. If we allow the police to use any tactic to trap someone because they have a warrant (a signed judicial order based on one man's decision after hearing one side of the story), what is to prevent this from happening to you? Does anyone realize how many people have warrants on them they don't even know about? Does anyone realize a warrant could be from a ticket in another state? Perhaps from a ticket where the ticket was paid but an auxiliary charge (which was unknown to the perpetrator) wasn't? That has happened. I had a parking ticket many years ago in Tennessee which I never saw. The only way I knew about it was when a notice was mailed to my home three days before the money had to be received! Had the mail been delayed three more days, I would have had a warrant without knowing about it. As it was, it cost more to ship the check overnight than the fine was.

So while I'm all for prosecuting criminals, let's not go overboard and forget that here, all men (and women) are assumed innocent until proven guilty... or apparently until a judge decides to make them guilty with a bench warrant...

TheRedneck