FL: Florida Cops Went to Absurd Lengths to Entrap Man Who Showed No Interest in Underage Sex

[reason.com – 10/21/19]

How do you catch a predator in Sarasota, Florida? You create one.

The Sarasota County Sheriff’s Office (SCSO) is going to “outrageous lengths” to make law-abiding lonely guys into sex offenders. That’s according to Noah Pransky, a fearless journalist who has been covering Florida’s addiction to entrapment for years.

In September, SCSO arrested 23 men for allegedly soliciting underage girls for sex. Pransky’s most recent piece in Florida Politics chronicles the elaborate back and forth between one of those men and a police officer pretending to be a young female. Pransky writes:

In one example from a 2017 operation, SCSO spent two days trying to seduce a 20-year-old man who showed no interest in having sex with a child. Detectives, who posted an ad for an 18-year-old woman on Tinder, matched with the young man and proceeded to swap “getting-to-know-you” texts for more than an hour; only then did detectives tell the man he was chatting with a 14-year-old girl, not an 18-year-old.

Undercover detectives continued to try and talk about sex with the man the next day; he again rebuffed the attempts, but continued the small talk because he indicated he was bored. Detectives then sent unsolicited, flirty photos to the man; a tactic that violates best practices and ethical standards for this type of stings.

Read more

 

Related posts

Subscribe
Notify of

We welcome a lively discussion with all view points - keeping in mind...

 

  1. Your submission will be reviewed by one of our volunteer moderators. Moderating decisions may be subjective.
  2. Please keep the tone of your comment civil and courteous. This is a public forum.
  3. Swear words should be starred out such as f*k and s*t and a**
  4. Please avoid the use of derogatory labels.  Use person-first language.
  5. Please stay on topic - both in terms of the organization in general and this post in particular.
  6. Please refrain from general political statements in (dis)favor of one of the major parties or their representatives.
  7. Please take personal conversations off this forum.
  8. We will not publish any comments advocating for violent or any illegal action.
  9. We cannot connect participants privately - feel free to leave your contact info here. You may want to create a new / free, readily available email address that are not personally identifiable.
  10. Please refrain from copying and pasting repetitive and lengthy amounts of text.
  11. Please do not post in all Caps.
  12. If you wish to link to a serious and relevant media article, legitimate advocacy group or other pertinent web site / document, please provide the full link. No abbreviated / obfuscated links. Posts that include a URL may take considerably longer to be approved.
  13. We suggest to compose lengthy comments in a desktop text editor and copy and paste them into the comment form
  14. We will not publish any posts containing any names not mentioned in the original article.
  15. Please choose a short user name that does not contain links to other web sites or identify real people.  Do not use your real name.
  16. Please do not solicit funds
  17. No discussions about weapons
  18. If you use any abbreviation such as Failure To Register (FTR), Person Forced to Register (PFR) or any others, the first time you use it in a thread, please expand it for new people to better understand.
  19. All commenters are required to provide a real email address where we can contact them.  It will not be displayed on the site.
  20. Please send any input regarding moderation or other website issues via email to moderator [at] all4consolaws [dot] org
  21. We no longer post articles about arrests or accusations, only selected convictions. If your comment contains a link to an arrest or accusation article we will not approve your comment.
  22. If addressing another commenter, please address them by exactly their full display name, do not modify their name. 
ACSOL, including but not limited to its board members and agents, does not provide legal advice on this website.  In addition, ACSOL warns that those who provide comments on this website may or may not be legal professionals on whose advice one can reasonably rely.  
 

9 Comments
Inline Feedbacks
View all comments

It’s not just in Florida…similar thing happened to me, except when they tried to get me to expose myself on a web cam, I was a smart ass and basically said “you first.” Thanks to that, I’m a lifetime recipient of the “we know you’re not really dangerous but we’re gonna tell the public you are anyway” award.

I got caught in a sting like this and it resembles how the police got me. I was on an adult website looking for an escort the escort said she was in the hotel across the street from my office. It is literally a 2 min walk from the bank I worked at. We talked we agreed on a price they sent me nude pics when I got to the hotel they dropped the age to a 16 turning 17 years old in a week can I bring liquor I said no 4 times to sex then they called me said that they really needed help so me being stupid I said ok I will help you as soon as I knocked on the door I was tackled by no joke 30 to 40 cops and there was a TV show being filmed. The police lied on the police report and said I admitted to everything and that I said I was horny. I found the video on YouTube which showed I didn’t say any f that. My lawyer said it doesn’t matter that the police lied and that entrapment was a myth. The DA didn’t even proved the video in discovery. I ended up taking a plea deal because I have older parents and they need my help I was facing years in prison and they offered 90 days in jail and a misdemeanor 10 years sex offender registry and 3 years probation no classes and my fine was $150. I just tried to get off probation my new lawyer did a great job arguing my case but the DA just kept saying we made a deal your honor and why wasn’t this brought up in the first place. I was denied early termination of probation. My original lawyer has been under investigation from the bar since April 8th and I emailed the investigator like 2 weeks ago and all what he said was this is still an ongoing investigation hopefully I will have an answer for you soon thanks for your patients. These underage sex stings on adult websites which are made for people to meet up to have sex showed be off limits to cops. How is it even fair to say your an adult send nude pics take about sex ect then when you get to a location they say there underage? This is not saving any children this is just taking innocent people life away. I have lost 10 million dollars because of this case I lost my job my house everything. I am not a threat to anyone the police took 2 cell phones and my computer and found nothing I was just a lonely guy looking to get laid if I wanted minors there are plenty of places to find them I was on an adult website and I was looking for an adult.

This guy should sue the snot out of those creeps!!! Unbelievable!!!

Is it illegal to do a reverse sting and entrap them in their own wrong doing?

Like send an internal investigation from the feds? Let FBI sting the sting for a change.

Yeah that sounds pretty preposterous…I know.

Or how about a news agency setting them up for corruption?

Probably doesn’t make sexy enough news for them…

Imagine the news headlines:

TO CATCH A PREDATOR OF IMAGINARY PREDATORS.

Or…

COPS CREATING SEX OFFENDERS WITH FAIRY DUST & BULLSH#T.

Something like that.

So messed up in many different ways. Cops send pictures of 14 year olds to catch a predators. Sounds like the cops have some CP pics in their arsenal? Isn’t that possession? Even if the picture is of an 18 year old…claiming it is a 14 year old makes that picture illegal…right?

So…
What else is new?