Posted on 12/29/2007 6:53:12 AM PST by Bulldawg Fan
Robin Garrison, an off-duty 42-year-old firefighter, was walking in Berliner Park in Columbus, Ohio, in May when he saw a woman sunbathing topless under a tree.
He approached her and they started talking and getting comfortable, the woman smiling and resting her foot on his shoulder at one point.
Eventually, she asked to see Garrison's penis; he unzipped his pants and complied.
Seconds later, undercover police officers pulled up in a van and arrested Garrison; he was later charged with public indecency, a misdemeanor, based on video footage taken by cops who were targeting men having sex or masturbating in the park. While topless sunbathing is legal in the city's parks, exposing more than that is against the law.
The case is just one of the more extreme examples of police stings aimed at luring people into committing crimes, a tactic that has resulted in hundreds of arrests, many convictions and plenty of controversy.
Law enforcement officials say that such sting operations are an extremely effective means of lowering crime rates and stopping the criminally minded before they commit worse offenses. From early 2006 to the spring of 2007, there were 160 citations for public indecency in the city, according to an investigation by 10TV News. Among those who were caught in the stings: an Ohio State University doctor, government employees and a retired highway trooper.
But such operations veer dangerously close to entrapment, say lawyers, civil libertarians and defendants who've been caught in sting operations.
(Excerpt) Read more at abcnews.go.com ...
Of course it’s entrapment.
But the “law enforcement” folks and the “justice” folks are counting on the fact that many, probably most of these men have families, significant others, some small amount of standing in the community, and would rather have this go away. Quickly. They’ll Larry Craig it the whole way.
The “law enforcement” folks and the courts of “justice” folks will likely reap a grand or two a pop, and they’ll split the booty between ‘em.
LOL!
1) A man sees a topless woman in an apparently aroused mood.
Do you:
a) Sit down and talk with her, or
b) Assume it’s a police sting and avoid it?
Personally, I’d be a little worried about the guys who weren’t interested in her.
All right, let’s get “it” all out in the open!
I can’t stand LE pulling crap like this. “Exposing perverts”? Yeah sure...
Hear, hear. No jury on which I sat would convict this man.
If the cops have the time and money to do this, then I guess the war on crime is won and we can start firing some of them.
If sunbathing is indeed illegal in the public parks of Columbus, I don’t understand how the police can legally ask someone to break that law in order to catch someone else breaking a similar exposure law. Two wrongs don’t make a right, and it’s entrapment in my book. How pathetic is it, that Columbus cops have to revert to that tactic in order to catch perverts?
I agree with what you’re saying here...I definitely am on the side of cops, but in this case it’s pretty clearly entrapment, IMHO.
There are pervs in parks, definitely, but this is not the way to get them.
I would venture to say that the defendant in this case is not a pervert ... at least in this case. He may be no saint ... but not a pervert ... not for this incident
Shamansky plans to appeal the verdict on the grounds that the jury wasn't instructed on the definition of entrapment.
I agree that the man was entrapped in this sting operation.
But what is wrong with this lawyer? If he was using an entrapment defense why didnt he explain entrapment to the jury?
This lawyer must be trying to milk this case for billable hours.
I would like to read ther job description for females officers in the Columbus PD
If it was a good looking woman, I’d naturally suspect something was up. Because I rarely have that kind of good luck. I’d ask her if she wanted to someplace, if she said no I’d know she either was a cop or a woman with a weird fetish. The guy was stupid and he’s now going to have to register as a sex offender.
It does not say that in the article.
It does say that he has to stay away from the park and he may lose his fireman job.
Classic. ;-)
If we start firing every fireman who warms up to a topless woman, get the bucket line ready for the next fire.
I read this last night and it screams entrapment. Doesn’t the Columbus PD have anything better to do, like, gee, arresting killers and illegals ? Pecker peekers in the park just is ridonkulous.
You know, if I were a cop — I would feel demoralized having to work on stupid “stings” like this, or catching “criminals” doing 10mph over the speed limit to gather my quota.
Why is there not more outrage over these sorts of operations? I just don’t get it.
Catch real criminals, not guys who think they are about to get “lucky”.
Second, this guy is a real fool. Walking up to some floozy who wants him to ‘whip it out’ in a public park. Geesh. I’d have run away from that woman, even if I wasn’t married!
But thankfully being a moron is not yet a crime.
It will be, once we have socialized health care however.
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