To follow up last night’s essay on, well, everything, I present to you coverage from the Louisville Eccentric Obvserver (fresh off defending their street cred like 50 Cent) on the tactics used in some states–Kentucky being one, at least under the last administration–to catch criminals.
This issue has gotten coverage across a broad spectrum, including a scathing Esquire article, but now it’s not only hit home, but gotten itself in the local spotlight, which we all know can be quite a bit more intense. I’ll put it this way: No matter what AG Conway decides to do about the use of vigilantes, I don’t envy him the backlash.
So what can be bad about involving third parties in your sting operations, now that we’ve established that they are very effective, raise awareness, and can probably do things that would be called entrapment if police attempted them?
Well, it’s worked legally so far. But there seems to me to be very little difference between police officers coordinating their efforts with a proxy and the officers themselves, and despite the fact that yes, we are indeed talking about sexual predators, I don’t like what this could potentially mean for civil liberties down the road. Of course, I know very little about the law, unless you count my lackluster (ok, not THAT bad) efforts for Dan Stroup.
Civil Libertarianism aside, it’s even worse once NBC gets involved–as they were in Kentucky– because they stand to profit from the whole business. The events that were the focus of the Esquire article, a suicide in Texas, have blossomed into a lawsuit. I recognize again that we’re talking about sexual predators, but these are people who need to be identified, captured, and treated, not examined by millions at their rock bottom. I understand that there are probably a lot of people who think that the predators don’t deserve their dignity anymore; I’ll argue that they’ve already lost theirs, and we’re losing ours by celebrating the spectacle. I also wonder if NBC would be willing to donate their ad revenue to mental facilities, or if this conduct is only a for-profit operation.
After all of this, I have to admit the following: Perverted Justice IS far more effective at bringing in these creeps than the police have proven to be. Awareness HAS been raised substantially by NBC, largely because we do all love the spectacle they give us (America, I suppose, never tires of hearing men with wispy mustaches hear “I guess just bein’ stupid I guess.”). But like every other bit of security offered in America lately, we have to wonder what price we pay, or what fee is yet to come due.
