Posted on 08/14/2007 4:27:34 AM PDT by Dudoight
The show was an instant success. It lured would-be child-sex predators to a public shaming, delivered by a handsome host. Ratings, awards and even praise from members of Congress followed. But now Dateline NBC's "To Catch a Predator" series is taking heat. And so is the police chief of the Collin County town that hosted it eight months ago. The troubles stem from the show's visit to Murphy, where more than 20 people were arrested but escaped prosecution because of evidence problems. Also a former district attorney ensnared in the sting shot himself.
(Excerpt) Read more at dallasnews.com ...
I hate those anti-white male ba$tards at NBC. I hope they lose those lawsuits.
Right! And no offense anyone, but these aren't the sharpest knives in the drawer, getting caught.
The standard of “What Makes Good TV” and the standard of evidence required in court are two very different things. NBC is recklessly ruining lives without meeting any kind of an objective standard.
I know, coming out against NBC on this is like coming out in favor of puppy-kicking...
Sex is a powerful drive that makes people do stupid and evil things if they have no conscience.
I did wonder if this wasn't some sort of entrapment.
Hardly.
I undertand your feeling ... but let me get this straight - you would favor the child predator over the smarmy network who overreached?
“I undertand your feeling ... but let me get this straight - you would favor the child predator over the smarmy network who overreached?”
MERCY! MERCY!
I have not finished my morning coffee and you, you heartless monster, brought back repressed memories of the last time I walked into a voting booth and faced a similarly disgusting choice./sarc
It is not an either/or proposition. I support the police doing their job to deal with the child predator. But because I favor that does not mean I have to condone a smarmy network that overreached.
I condemn them both.
But, if forced to choose, I will favor the man accused of being a child predator who still has the presumption of innocence until conviction.
As much as I detest the MSM, I thought, for once, they were doing a good thing by exposing these predators.
I may be wrong but my first impression is that it depends on ‘whose ox is being gored’. A member of government gets caught and lawsuits start flying.
Things really started heating up when NBC hounded a man to the point of suicide.
I have no sympathy for any of the people who showed up for those stings. They were clearly there to have sex with children. The only thing sicker than that is a society that would allow lawsuits on their behalf, including the lawsuit by the sister of the former prosecutor who killed himself. Who gives a sht. He showed up to have sex with children. That’s why he killed himself. Entrapment? Maybe. But you can’t get entrapped if you don’t want to have sex with children.
This “show” is horrible and as pandering as you can get... while I am all for getting perv’s off the street, the “reporter” is going to wind up with a bullet in his head sooner or later. He’s going to come out from behind a closed door with that smug look on his face to “confront” someone, only to find someone whos armed, realizes his life is now over, and commits a murder suicide while NBC’s hidden cameras catch it all.
I am sure it gets high ratings, but its only a matter of time until something like this happens.
the presumption of innocenceThey all showed up! To have sex with children! Only a moron or an EU bureaucrat would have trouble understand those situations. Did you watch the show?
You say that like it would be a bad thing.
You posted: Things really started heating up when NBC hounded a man to the point of suicide.
***
Perhaps this man committed suicide because he was caught attempting to have sex with a minor. I don’t care that much for the technique NBC used in its show but these guys are perverts seeking sex from teenaged girls
I find it hard to muster much sympathy for them even as opposed to NBC
A member of government gets caught and lawsuits start flying.Exactly. No one cared when the Rabbi (rightfully) lost his job. But when a former prosecutor (maybe even a personal friend of Johnny Sutton!) shows up to have sex with children, suddenly it's the show's fault. That's one of the biggest pile of steaming BS to come out of the legal community to date.
That is nonsense. The perps are ruining their OWN lives by their bad behavior.
========================
Though I've never watched the show it would seem to me these men recklessly ruined their own lives.
Let's say you receive your bank statement and see a deposit for $100 that you didn't make. If you choose to spend it, you know it's theft (no matter how you try to justify it).
Turns out that the bank made an error in your account months ago and they were simply correcting it. Spending it, therefore, is not a crime.
Dateline is essentially depositing money in checking accounts and filming who spends it. These sexual predators weren't committing any actual crime -- no children were involved at any time -- they simply thought they were.
Given the daily activity of all too many prosecutors, to calim that one killed himself over just that “sting” may or may not be accurate.
But - it is , alas, all too likely that the ‘dear departed’ had already abused his power sufficiently to have well justified his decision.
Our legal system is in need of a major overhaul.
They weren’t trying to do a “good thing” — they were trying to boost ratings.
I’m not sticking up for the pervs, but law enforcement should do their job without all the fanfare BS.
ROFL!
Now that you mention it, it just might be a good deal all the way around.
Must-see TV, perp wasted, and smarmy TV droid eliminated.
Don't think the series would last long after that, though.
I have watched some of these shows. It is amazing. Many of these people lead normal upstanding lives, and some are people that you might be suspicious of. The question that does not get asked is what is driving people who have what appears to be stable lives to take such risks. My answer would be pornography has many many hidden social costs. Pornography allows anyone to become a pervert in the privacy of their own home. Once pornography and perversion was centered in the seedy section of town, now pornography is mainstream, and it can easily be had on your television or computer. And for those who become addicted they need to act out and sadly children often become the targets of their acting out.
Orwellian rationalization, right out of the "1984" mindset.
The guy WHO BLEW HIS BRAINS OUT was naughty talking on the internet and that was it. He didnt go to some girl's house, he didnt harrass her. This was entrapment, period...and abuse of police power. Thsy busted into his house! For what.....hate thought?
Can anyone imagine them doing this to a female or African American? I can't. They overreached in their typical misandrist way and they ought to be punished. Plus , the police were stupid pawns; stupid rural hicks and greedy morons.
Do you think that the people showing up to supposedly molest a minor are responsible for ruining their own lives?
I can't stand to watch these shows and have never seen more than a few seconds of one. I think it has something to do with not wanting to hear lame excuses. Exactly how young are the "children" these men think they are coming to have sex with?
Those men drive 100’s of miles sometimes. Never underestimate the power of perversion to cloud men’s minds.
I don’t agree. They took some perverts off of the street.
You posted: Let’s say you receive your bank statement and see a deposit for $100 that you didn’t make. If you choose to spend it, you know it’s theft (no matter how you try to justify it).Turns out that the bank made an error in your account months ago and they were simply correcting it. Spending it, therefore, is not a crime.
***
Your analogy fails in that it isn’t inherently wrong, or illegal, to spend $100. It IS inherently wrong to have sex with a 14 year old girl. There can be no mistake there. Entrapment is different than this sort of sting operation. Entrapment causes someone who would not otherwise be likely to commit a crime to do so. These men weren’t called up on the phone and solicited by teenage girls. The men were looking for this sort of thing and that is what they found. To my mind, anything, including this NBC show, that gives these perverts reason to think twice is ok by me.
NBC doesn't drive to their houses and make them send pictures of their penises to people they think are 13 year-old girls. Those men do it willingly. I don't know how you can "entrap" someone into sending you a picture of their penis.
exactly.
The problem I have with the show is that it is a theatrical form of vigilante justice. Good intention, improper execution. The evidence problems that have now are a result of amateurs playing detective. That said, I think the show did serve to show that these predators can be caught and perhaps will get the professionals off their duffs. The FBI is running a program now that is working.
Along the way, if one or two of these creeps was shamed into serving justice upon themselves by committing suicide, good riddance.
I don't believe that's what actually happened.
The shows emanate from selected states---states that HAVE LAWS ALREADY ON THE BOOKS regarding child sex and transmitting explicit images and sex talk.
The perverts initiate the sex talk---that's when the decoy (acting like a younsgter) takes over the chat.
Some of these disgusting men transmit pictures of their genitals and videos of themselves masturbating to kids they think are as young as 12.
Some of the perverts are calculating and make dates to meet the decoys in other locales.
Appears that's what happened in the suicide case. The guy probably tried to lure the decoy to his home---and freaked when NBC showed up.
The To Catch a Predator shows are not about NBC entrapping perverts---it's about perverts entrapping children into sex.
It’s all fun and games until you snag a lawyer or a high-ranking Democrat.
Duh, Ms. Obvious.
Even worse. Here we have government cooperating with private enterprise for power and money.
Like the DA who blew his own brains out? Who never broke the law in his life?? I'd like to see the transcript of what he said that gave them the right to bust through his front door with dogs and guns. This is Bull&hit and Dateline would never pull this crap with a PC victim, you can bet on it. Despicable.
BS. Those men don’t accidentally email a picture of themselves naked to a 13 year-old girl. This is already happening throughout the country. NBC just merged into the traffic.
The reason they are catching so many people is that so many people are doing it. This is just a minute part of it.
The only time I ever did chat, I was propositioned. And I was 38 when it happened. I deleted IRC after that happened.
So you are saying that NBC owes the DA's sister $105M because her brother was so mentally unstable that he shot himself?
THOUGHT??? He propositioned a minor. He gave her enough information to bust him. He was doing more than thinking. He was trying to get busy. If he was just "thinking", how did the police find him?
That has not been proven, particularly not in the case of former Kaufman County District Attorney Louis "Bill" Conradt Jr. After all, Conradt did not even go into the house. He did not talk to the decoy.
Under the rules, such as they were, NBC would have let this one go. But a former county District Attorney was too big a fish to let off the hook, so they pursued him to his home. They barged into his home with cameras rolling instead of arresting him at the door, in order to get good footage of him running away. Unfortunately, at the end of the hall was a room with a gun, and Conradt wound up killing himself.
So, a man is dead. Let's pause over the body and look at what went wrong, here. Assuming that you consider a dead guy a problem, of course...
1. We don't know the guy was guilty. There are a lot of alternate explainations for his behavior, one of which is that he was actually trying to help a child whom he thought was being exploited. This is the very thing a proper arrest and trial would determine.
2. The police did not follow their own rules. The police did not even follow NBC's made-up rules when deciding to raid Conradt's house. Those rules are there for a reason, which is to protect the innocent from police harrassment. Without sufficient cause, the police are simply not allowed to barge in and ruin your life. Nor should they.
3. The police did not control the arrest. This is the most unforgivable error, IMHO, and the one that is going to put NBC on the hook for a huge settlement. As a former DA, it was entirely forseeable that Conradt would have a gun in the house. But instead of asking him to voluntarily surrender, the police raided the house without controlling the subject first. The chase down the hallway and the subsequent suicide was entirely avoidable. But NBC was interested in dramatic footage for TV, and so they came in with their bright lights and cameras and hounded this man to death.
And note, the man they hounded to the point of death is the one for which they had the least reliable evidence.
Yo. How do you think they found him?
That “DA” was a sick SOB that was trying to seduce a THIRTEEN YEAR OLD BOY. He received appropriate justice, even though it was from his own hand.
I have absolutely NO sympathy for people who abuse children.
AMEN!
I don't know. An innocent man wouldn't blow his brains out. I think it is safe to assume he was guilty. He was a DA, not a garbage truck driver. He could have OWNED NBC if he was innocent and he knew that.
He knew he was busted.
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