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Here’s a yzffdibdky
social experiment that is the yin to the Joey Salad’s video yang that “taught” us to beware of strangers.
As Canada’s National Post reports, Vancouver police sergeant Mark Horsley borrowed an electric wheelchair and went undercover to the “drug-infested Downtown East Side” in order to catch the criminals preying on the most vulnerable:
…The objective: pretend to be disabled and brain-injured from a motorcycle accident that never really happened. Play the “easy mark.” Bait criminals by flashing cash and valuables, such as cellphones and cameras. When they pounce, collar them. Make them pay.
“My boss tied a pork chop around my neck and threw me into a shark tank,” Horsley recalled Thursday at VPD headquarters.
The operation didn’t go quite as planned.
“We wanted a serious assault or a robbery,” he said. “That’s all we were after.” Instead, people approached with offers of sympathy and hope. Encouragement. Friendly cautions. They made unsolicited donations: food, other stuff, and $24 in spare change.
In five days of undercover work from his wheelchair, with loot hanging from a fanny pack for all to see and perhaps snatch, and after more than 300 “contacts” with people, Horsley made not a single arrest. People wanted to give him things, instead.
Passers-by insisted on dropping coins into his lap. “I did not panhandle,” he said. Two men bought him pizza. Others just stopped and chatted, passed the time, exchanged pleasantries. All anyone took was his photograph.
Once, a guy came along and crouched over Horsley. He reached in, as if making for the fanny pack. Horsley tensed. Here it was, at last: Heinous crime in progress, bust coming up. The man’s fingers touched the fanny pack. Then the prospective perp zippered it shut. He asked Horsley to please be more careful with his things, for goodness sake.
Several more times, Horsley was approached and told to take care. By known criminals, even.
Here’s the rest of the story. Read it and (don’t!) weep. Because most people are good. – L.
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44 Comments
the horrible strangers aren’t horrible. well who would of guessed? I not sure trying to get someone to do something wrong is right.
I remember hanging out in a not-so-safe place as a teenager. I didn’t see it that way at the time, but looking back I can see how the gang members and homeless would have turned many off about the area. Me? I was there nightly (with a pretty consistent group of friends) until the last city bus left, well after 11pm. It was my chosen community and the community accepted me wholeheartedly.
Often, I would buy food at Taco Bell (remember $0.59 tacos?) and share it with a group of friends; as well as anyone else who asked. When a boyfriend was acting less than charitably with me, one of the gang members confronted him about it. When one of the homeless guys saw something at a food pantry he thought I’d like, he grabbed it for me.
Of all of the places I hung out as a teen it was likely viewed as the most dangerous. It also happened to be one of the places I was never harmed.
Wow thats an incredible story.
If I remember correctly, they conducted a similar type of social experiment in the New York City subway system years ago when a person posed as somebody helpless or handicapped. But during this experiment, that person was indeed a victim of crime more often than the average person riding the subway. Then they’d have law enforcement officers nearby pose as hippies or deadbeats, basically people who would appear that they’d give two sheets to the wind if they witnessed a crime or not. But instead, the police officer “hippies and deadbeats” would move in to subdue and arrest the surprised criminal victimizing the pawn. Crime in the subway dropped considerably during those undercover stings BUT, of course, these stings were ruled unconstitutional so they had to stop. Subway crime then immediately rose back up to their previous levels.
So I think it may depend upon where you conduct this type of experiment or sting. Vancouver, Canada is probably a far cry different than a New York City subway system.
I’m not sure where exactly he went and when but I have lived a while in the general area and I have a hard time believing this story. Either that or he was incredibly lucky (or not!) with the people he encountered. It’s definitely not a place you’d want to be. The only ones they are “kind” to are each other like some sort of fraternity of criminals and addicts. If they really wanted an arrest (which they didn’t expect to make anyways according to the original story) he should go into a wheelchair dressed up as your average suburban family man. Guaranteed he would not last the evening. If you infiltrate you blend in. If you want to bait criminals, you don’t.
@ John: “Vancouver, Canada is probably a far cry different than a New York City subway system.” Been in both and would not hesitate to go back into the latter but never again the former.
http://www.nbcnewyork.com/news/local/NYPD-Operation-Lucky-Thieves-Anti-Theft-Sting-Tactics-Challenged-Lawsuit-208245381.html
http://nypost.com/2014/09/18/nypds-operation-lucky-bag-gutted-by-wrongly-arrested-settlement/
You mean this John. It’s hardly the same thing and should be declared unconstitutional. Picking a dropped object up isn’t theft.
if you mean something else I’d like to see something on it because I can’t find it and I’m curious how it actually happened as the NYPD seems to make a habit out of inventing new ways to arrest non-criminals.
Heartening story! I wonder what happened to the $24; perhaps the police could donate it to a local homeless shelter?
The article said:
“It’s all very heartening. But Horsley admitted some disappointment.”
——————-
DISAPPOINTMENT BECAUSE EVERYONE WAS KIND.
Sgt. Horsley might not know it, but crooks are skilled at spotting undercover cops. The savvy ones are like Sherlock Holmes in their seemingly uncanny ability to note tiny details about a person that indicate they’re a member of the constabulary and they know to steer clear.
The people who proved to be kind and helpful were probably just nice men and women who were down on their luck. They exist, even in bad neighborhoods.
Micheal,
I have family that have lived in and around that area for decades, and you are just being a paranoid jerk. It is nowhere near the horrible place you are making it out to be.
Jill,
You need to stop watching so many crime dramas and movies. Criminals that commit the types of crimes they were trying to entice are generally stupid. They are not masterminds by any stretch of the imagination. I have cop friends that are uniform and those that are not. And unless you saw them in uniform, you could never tell they were cops.
I love this! I am so sharing right away!
Mikey Boy,
Did you try reading any of the comments on the original story? All the people that live in that area and work in that area are not surprised. They all think it has a great sense of community.
@Warren: “All the people that live in that area and work in that area are not surprised. They all think it has a great sense of community.”
Which is not exactly surprising, it’s well known that communities which endure hardship tend to build a stronger sense of community and solidarity. What I find interesting is that the police didn’t realise that: they basically proved to the world that they don’t know the territory, which highlights a huge detachment between them and the population which lives there.
This kind of detachment tends to be the source of a lot of issues, not to mention that it makes the police much less effective.
In all fairness, this WAS Canada. I’d like to see someone try it in the US.
Before we met, when my wife was in college in Chicago in the ’90s, she got off at the wrong “El” station and ended up in the middle of the Cabrini Green public housing projects. She was approached by a young man dressed head to toe in gang colors. He said something to her to the effect of, “You are in the wrong neighborhood, miss. Let me walk you out of here so no one messes with you.” And that’s what he did, walked her safely out of the projects to the closest safe El station back to campus. There are good people everywhere, even in crappy circumstances. I’m thankful for this gang member and his good soul. I hope karma repaid him.
It’s amazing that the naysayers here are doing the exact same thing as all of the free-range detractors out there. The main tenant of this site is that our children are statistically a lot safer out in the world then people believe. Yet, there are several comments that extoll the stupidity and corruptness of our police. You just can’t have it both ways. There are millions of police interactions every day in the US alone. The vast majority of those interactions are peaceful, respectful, and legal. Yet people are so eager to jump on the anti-police bandwagon because of the horror stories we see on the nightly news. The same nightly news that tells us our children are only safe when handcuffed to our wrists day and night because otherwise they will be snatched away or have some other horrible fate befall them. In other words, statistically speaking, you are more likely to have a peaceful (if not positive) interaction with an officer of the law than you are to have a non-peaceful one.
Cops aren’t stupid. VPD saw a trend in violent crimes against handicapped people in a specific area and they stepped in to try to put a halt to it. Did it not go the way they planned? Of course, but at least they made the effort! It sucks, but would it have been better for them to wait until it got entirely out of control? How many violent crimes against disabled people has YOUR city had? I’m sure it’s a lot higher than 28 where I live. Of course, my PD is entirely underfunded and understaffed that they’ve pretty much stopped responding to non-violent calls because they simply don’t have the resources.
If nothing else, VPD has probably improved the community relationship with their police. The citizens know that the police will respond and that the police don’t consider any one group a throw-away. That’s at the foundation of community policing and the basis of the Broken Windows Theory which has been proven to significantly improve the quality of life in the cities where it has been implemented.
We should all be so fortunate.
I don’t disagree with the assessment that often people overplay their fears of low-income neighborhoods in developing countries. I also think that even in dangerous situations low-level criminals sometimes still ‘respect’ certain vulnerable people. I’d like to see the experiment repeated with someone pretending to be an unattentive 30-something woman.
I’m pleased to read this, but not that surprised. In particular, I suspect the fact that he was pretending to be mentally handicapped might have something to do with how well he was treated. Wouldn’t a person have to lack any human feeling at all to rob him? I would hope that people evil enough to do that are rare.
@Kimberly: “Cops aren’t stupid. VPD saw a trend in violent crimes against handicapped people in a specific area and they stepped in to try to put a halt to it. Did it not go the way they planned? Of course, but at least they made the effort!”
Stupidity is not a matter of not trying or not putting in effort: actually wasting time and effort chasing the wrong solution because you didn’t do your homework is pretty stupid if you think about it, and it’s more stupid the more time and effort you wasted.
This doesn’t mean cops are always stupid, but sometimes they are and in this specific case they were.
Warren, class act. Just attack someone personally with name-calling because they don’t share your opinion. I will pray for your loved ones tonight for it cannot be easy to live with a piece of dung of your magnitude.
Micheal,
Don’t pray for my family. They don’t want it. Personal beliefs.
Second you attacked and labelled a whole community as criminals and addicts, which would include my family that lives out there. You get what you give. Just because you are cowardly doesn’t mean the rest of the area’s population it.
And seeing as how all the comments from people that live their, my personal knowledge of the area, my family’s opinions of the area are all contrary to your accusations and allegations, then you are actually worse than my first description, but I promised Lenore no more swearing.
Well, well, well Warren P. seems a 5 minute Google search will tell anyone all there is to know about you. Do you get high by calling people names online or is it just that you are so insecure about yourself that the only way you could ever get noticed in a crowd is by dragging everyone down first?
Like Lenore said, this isn’t much of surprise. There is a code among criminals. Even in prison, even the most hardened criminals look down upon child molestors. That’s why they are separated from general population. If gen pop knew they were pedophiles, they wouldn’t last the night.
My biggest concern, and it’s not for the children, it’s for the cop. If any one of those guys realize he was undercover, then the criminal in them would definitely come out. And hopefully, they will not recognize him in civies or uniform at other times. He would end up putting a target on his back for sure.
I do have a question though, wouldn’t this sting be considered “entrapment”?
@Eric S,
This doesn’t really seem like ‘entrapment’ at least not the way other ‘entrapment’ issues come up. Usually in the ‘entrapment’ cases the cop solicits someone to commit a crime then cuffs them when they do as solicited.
But just being (or appearing to be) disabled and having something of value is not asking someone to commit a crime.
@Steve,
If you look at the full article in the link you will see why the cop had some disappointment.
“There have been 28 violent offences on wheelchair-using folk in the city since January 2014, according to the Vancouver Police Department. Two-thirds of those crimes occurred in the drug-infested Downtown Eastside (DTES). One of the victims was sexually assaulted; six others required medical attention.”
That the cop is not disappointed that people were kind. He is disappointed that he was not able to catch and bring to justice the person(s?) responsible for those 28 violent crimes. Wouldn’t you be disappointed if you thought you had a chance to stop those assaults and it didn’t work?
@bsolar: Exactly. Despite what some people may believe, communities like this stick together. Even if they don’t agree with the criminal element. It’s either keep quiet and keep the thugs off their backs, and sometimes get some things from them. Or trust cops. In the States, not many people tend to trust cops, especially in those neighborhoods. They’d rather take their chances with gang members.
Also, these gangs, are more organized than many people would like to think. What is the best way to get people on your side? You don’t plunder them. Take their belongings. You provide for them what they don’t have, but need (at the very least think they need it). After awhile, they’re loyalty will shift towards their “provider”. This is how the Portuguese took over Brazil. While the rest of the South America was plundered/colonized by Spain.
Heartening story, but it certainly looks like entrapment. My understanding of the law here is that any charges resulting from this sting would be thrown out of court.
On another topic……Lenore – is there any way to block trolls from this comment site? I used to enjoy the robust discussions here; its a great community of smart, interested people, but lately, elements of name-calling, condescension and argument for the sake of argument are creeping in. Its getting a bit tiresome.
Mikey,
One last comment to you, and I am done. Not going to be dragged into a crap discussion by you.
Google me all you want, I don’t give a rat’s backside. I call people out, that is what I do. You don’t like it, well sucks to be you.
You insulted the entire population of an area, and think you can walk away? Nope. Ain’t happenin,
What a sad, sad existence if that’s the only way you know how to express yourself. Vacuous mind, loud windbag.
Once, when I lived in NYC, I couldn’t find my car keys. I searched and searched and finally went out to my car and saw that I had left the keys in the lock of the trunk. They were right there for the taking. Anyone could have grabbed them and made off with a free car. Yet, on busy crowded New York City street, no one took these keys which were exposed like that for several hours. That was an epiphany moment for me.
“What a sad, sad existence if that’s the only way you know how to express yourself.”
Pretty much.
My advice, Michael, is to just not read anything he writes; it improves your life with no loss of quality. Eventually, he’ll figure out he’s blustering in an empty room, and wander off to troll someone else.
If you insist on poking the animal with a stick, the high point will be when he gets so enraged at his impotence that he starts imagining all the beatings he wishes he could give you..
Hopefully Donna can chime in on this but until then, entrapment is enticing someone to commit a crime that they otherwise would not commit. I’m not sure this applies in this case since they are not trying to catch innocent people who on this day decided to rob a handicapped person, when otherwise on any other day and time they wouldn’t have done it.
This reminds me of all the times that big, burly, “scary looking” guys have grabbed my suitcases – and helped me or down the stairs!
I travel a lot, and this has happened in many countries. They’re always surprised when I’m so grateful.
This also reminds me of a time in Amsterdam when I watched an elderly man and a very pregnant woman get into a fight over the last seat on a tram. They both were insisting that the OTHER person should sit down, and neither of them wanted to be the one to sit and leave the other one standing. Finally a different passenger got up, freeing two seats, and everyone was happy.
@Margot, it’s not just tiresome, it’s awful. Every time I see a certain name in the “recent posts” section, I don’t even read. (Hint: it’s not Warren) The picking apart line by line of people’s thoughts and opinions has gone too far.
Margot and Beth,
What the police are actually doing is baiting not entrapping. It is a fine line, but the logic behind it is, only actual criminals will take the bait. Whereas entrapping someone means you have persuaded them to commit a crime. A lot of jurisdictions do it with cars, in order to curtail auto theft and chop shops.
I’m cracking up at this! Didn’t Free Range Kids get it’s start because the World’s Worst Mom trusted her kid to take the subway alone in a city that most of you claim is scary and crime-ridden? I lived in NYC for 17 years, all over Manhattan, in sublets mostly, and i talked to people in the neighborhoods I lived in, which were “cheap” and therefore “bad”. I ignored the “fear and dread” stuff–because I had recently read a neat book by a man who lived in those areas, whose name was Harry Golden. He said, “Life is with people,” and I gave it a try and he was right.
Isn’t FRK about trust? Trusting the stranger? Chatting with the brain-damaged weirdo in the wheel chair? Give me a break! NYC was my private Vancouver! Everywhere I live is– if I let it be. Fear is the enemy. My neighborhood is not.
The legal definition of entrapment — according to the Department of Justice is “Entrapment is a complete defense to a criminal charge, on the theory that “Government agents may not originate a criminal design, implant in an innocent person’s mind the disposition to commit a criminal act, and then induce commission of the crime so that the Government may prosecute.” Jacobson v. United States, 503 U.S. 540, 548 (1992). A valid entrapment defense has two related elements: (1) government inducement of the crime, and (2) the defendant’s lack of predisposition to engage in the criminal conduct. Mathews v. United States, 485 U.S. 58, 63 (1988). Of the two elements, predisposition is by far the more important.”
http://www.justice.gov/usam/criminal-resource-manual-645-entrapment-elements
@bsolar
I’m not sure how you can say the cops were stupid in this case. As I said in my previous post, they saw a series of crimes in a specific area and responded. Through analysis of the police reports, I’m assuming, they determined the spots where most of the crimes had occurred and then put their resources — in this case, an undercover cop — in those areas.
They were unsuccessful, not stupid.
It’s a shame that you are condemning this officer and his department based on a news article that does not, in any way, lay out the day-to-day planning and implementation that went into this operation and your own apparent bias against the police.
@Kimberly: “I’m not sure how you can say the cops were stupid in this case. As I said in my previous post, they saw a series of crimes in a specific area and responded. Through analysis of the police reports, I’m assuming, they determined the spots where most of the crimes had occurred and then put their resources — in this case, an undercover cop — in those areas. They were unsuccessful, not stupid.”
The problem is not being unsuccessful and neither sending an undercover cop: the problem is planning an operation with the simplistic idea that criminals just need a bait, then being baffled when you truly understand how the people in these area behave like it’s the first time you talk with some of them. It didn’t fail because they were unlucky, it failed because the whole operation was based on completely misguided assumptions.
@Kimberly: “It’s a shame that you are condemning this officer and his department based on a news article that does not, in any way, lay out the day-to-day planning and implementation that went into this operation and your own apparent bias against the police.”
As I already explained, thinking that a specific operation was stupid doesn’t mean thinking all police operations are stupid. I’m sure this officer and his department have their bright moments too just like they have their not so bright moments, after all it’s human nature.
I actually hope that this failure made them realise that they might need more insight before they attempt an operation like this again and that they need to better know this area they so deeply misunderstood. If they learn from this their next operation will be more successful, but to learn from your mistakes you have to understand why you made them in the first place, which sometimes means accepting the fact that you were stupid and should have known better.
Anna – unfortunately, people who are mentally disabled actually are MORE likely to be robbed, abused and sexually assaulted than able-bodied people. Out in public, they’re generally treated worse, not better, than able-bodied people. It’s horrible.
However, most of the crimes happen in institutions or in the home. Being robbed or assaulted in the street is rare, but being robbed or assaulted by your caretaker isn’t.
Birch, I see your point. I was thinking about what would happen out on the street, not with a caretaker. Which is actually even more evil, so you’re right.
@Yocheved: …Not to say that Amsterdam is a bad neighborhood, I hope? 😉
Inspiring story. Ive had similar experiences in the remote mountain villages of Albania where there are no police, and none are needed.
You forgot to mention this part of the article:
“There have been 28 violent offences on wheelchair-using folk in the city since January 2014, according to the Vancouver Police Department. Two-thirds of those crimes occurred in the drug-infested Downtown Eastside (DTES). One of the victims was sexually assaulted; six others required medical attention.”
Evidently this was not a social experiment, and crimes of this nature have been happening in that area.
The more disappointing part of the story is the officer’s stated intent of entrapment.