So the cops are trying to gin some up:
Nine months ago, a similar police decoy program called Operation Lucky Bag was effectively shut down by prosecutors and judges who were concerned that it was sweeping up the civic-minded alongside those bent on larceny. Shopping bags, backpacks and purses were left around the subway system, then stealthily watched by undercover officers. They arrested anyone who took the items and walked past a police officer in uniform without reporting the discovery.
Now, a new version of the operation has started to catch people in public places outside the subways, and at much higher stakes, Criminal Court records show.
Unlike the initial program, in which the props were worth at most a few hundred dollars, the bags are now salted with real American Express cards, issued under pseudonyms to the Police Department.
Because the theft of a credit card is grand larceny, a Class E felony, those convicted could face sentences of up to four years. The charges in the first round of Operation Lucky Bag were nearly all petty larceny, a misdemeanor, with a maximum penalty of one year in jail.
Two years ago, I found a wallet on the street in the city I live in. I picked it up, walked past probably several cops and what not, as it never even occurred to me to give it to them. I went through the wallet, found the ID, called the person, met them at Kroger (a grocery store near where we both lived), and gave it to them.
That would make me a potential felon in NYC. As noted in the comments:
It’s a twofer: you discourage good Samaratans (who might actually try to return the purses) while at the same time promoting a view of the police as a sneaky organization out to get you.
Idiots. Maybe if everyone reports them as suspicious packages and it costs them an arm and a leg to scramble the Homeland Security apparatus, it will nip this bullshit in the bud.
*** Update ***
Option #2- If you live in NYC, anything you find unattended should be handed to a policeman. Coke cans, empty McDonald’s bags- it doesn’t matter. It might have an American Express card in it.
mitch
Is that not entrapment?
Bombadil
Brilliant.
Punchy
Cole nails it. Who thinks to give a random backpack or wallet to Five-O? You find a number, make a call, and deliver it back to the person. Or, in a subway, you’d find a lost’n’found.
The few cops I know would be all “I don’t want to haul that shit around all day” and have me figure it out for myself. This sounds like entrapment.
Billy K
Idiocy. I would never think to return a wallet or purse to a cop. I don’t believe they’d get it back to the owner. No, I’d do what I’ve done before – track down the person and call them myself.
Jake
Careful John. Normally I’d say that’s an excellent idea but since the NYPD seems to be suffering from a massive brain fart they might say that’s calling in a false report.
And ignoring an unattended bag is aiding and abetting terrists.
WTF? Why not call this Operation Schrodenger’s cat? If I pick up a purse full of credit cards and don’t hand it to the cops does it become a Class E if I don’t open the purse (and therefore never knew there were credit cards)?
I guess we can add Intent to the list of “quaint” ideas.
Dreggas
And to think, the NYPD as it stands is just part of the legacy of Rudy Giuliani…
Buck
Be careful calling in suspicious packages.
If it turns out the package is a bomb they will Richard Jewell your ass.
Bill H
Many doctors, including emergency room physicians, will not stop at the scene of a car accident because they are rather ceratin that they will be sued for malpractice and risk losing their medical license if they stop to offer assistance. Not the same thing as this isssue, I know, but…
No good deed goes unpunished these days.
TenguPhule
Welcome to the America that Republicans have made.
Rejoice, for Big Brother Thought Police DoubleSpeak is Alive and Well.
Wilfred
Maybe they could tie a string to the backpacks and pull them along the ground. If someone chases after them, they are assholes as well as potential felons.
Or how about putting up signs saying that unattended backpacks may contain terrorist bombs? Then if someone tries to pick one up he would be a potential felon terrorist asshole.
Nathan
A couple weeks ago, I lost my wallet in a bathroom on a college campus. The guy that found it didn’t return it to the office in the building, instead walking halfway across campus to the financial aid office of all places, figuring they’d have a student directory. It’s definitely not the decision I would have made–I’d have just seen if that building’s office had a lost and found, or failing that tried to look the person up myself. Don’t get me wrong, I’m eternally grateful to the good samaritan that did what he did. My point is, I guess, that there are countless ways to handle the situation, and only one is illegal. The only real way to know if the person intends to break the law is to follow them until they go into a store and use the stolen credit card. Which is absurd.
Zifnab
Promote nothing. They really are, literally, a sneaky organization out to get you, at that point.
What? Is there seriously so little crime in New York that you need to litter hand bags across subway stations to lure out people who think about committing crimes?
If anything, this sounds less like a bust on purse snatchers and more a bust on subway bums.
Dreggas
Oh and this is the kind of world we get for having shows like “To catch a predator” and other stupid shit. before long they’ll be shooting someone and leaving the gun for you to pickup so you can be hauled in for murder.
gypsy howell
They’re training us to be suspicious of each other, and suspicious of seemingly altruistic acts. Just like those repulsive announcements over the PA in the airport instructing us to “Please report all suspicious activity to the Department of Homeland Security.”
Did you ever think, when you were a kid, that you would hear stuff like this in America in your lifetime?
I sure didn’t.
I watched “Lives of Others” recently, and all I could say was “ohhhhhh shit… this is where they’re taking us.”
Fwiffo
They’re not trying to catch good Samaritans. They’re trying to catch good Smaritans who don’t trust cops. After all, mistrust of cops is thoughtcrime.
wasabi gasp
They should put guns, cocaine and child porn in the bags too.
rawshark
Why are they using Amex cards? Why drag us into it? Shaft Visa or something.
Zifnab
Nah, it’s not nearly that devious. This is nice, safe, record-padding police work. When some politico comes by the Department and wants good news, the Chief can crow about how he caught fifty purse snatchers just this month AND how crime is dropping across the board.
No cop is going to get shot in these stings, so its a popular beat. You get to “fight crime” without any real detective work or risk to life and limb. And it makes for good publicity when you’ve got all these warm, fuzzy numbers to report.
Jay C
And, in addition to being sneaky, underhanded, and borderline-entrapment illegal; “Operation Lucky Bag” is also wildly self-contradictory (and self-defeating as well) – since the NYPD and virtually every other civic agency has spent every day since 9/11/01 haranguing the NYC public to treat ANY unattended bag as “suspicious”: i.e. a possible terrorist hell-bomb loaded with C-4, sarin, anthrax or Polonium (or maybe all four).
Given the official hysteria in NYC regarding abandoned luggage, it’s amazing anyone would even dare to pick the stuff up anyway: then again, in a city of 8 million folks, the likelihood of finding an idiot is way greater.
I like John’s solution, though: maybe if DHS, or the FBI, or the Bomb Squad keeps having to be called out to “defuse” the NYPD’s “lucky” bags, someone will get pissed off enough to can this ludicrous operation.
Cyrus
Until someone manages to get elected running on a platform of “Get moderate and realistic on crime,” I blame voters for this. It’s great to know that everyone here agrees this is stupid and totalitarian, but we’re apparently a minority, at least among likely voters in the cities or states where these policies exist.
jenniebee
Well, given the grand success of the sniper program in Iraq where anybody who picked up string off the sidewalk was summarily shot for being a terrist bombmaker, it’s natural that the NYP would want to apply the principles behind that brilliant idea to domestically ferret out those pesky criminals who routinely thwart the police by not being pro-active in the commitment of crime.
Face
Never thought I’d live to see the day “Richard Jewell” was used as a verb. Very well done.
NYC is about to have a SHITLOAD of random backpacks, briefcases, wallets, and purses left about the city. Either that, or the NYPD had better quadruple the existing size of their Lost and Found, cuz they’re about to get every stray paper bag, half-eaten burrito, and random 16-year-old Strawberry Shortcake faux makeup kit ever kicked up under some random dumpster…
Not the Senator
I would never just hand a wallet over to a beat cop. To a cop on duty at a Precinct who can give me a receipt, yes. To a random first cop that I saw, no. Cops need to provide accountability too.
Peter ve
15 years ago my wife forgot a bag in the NYC subway. She called the subway system, they asked what line she was on, they had the bag, she picked it up at a lost and found. End of story.
Today, the bag would be taken out and blown up by Reich, er, Homeland Security.
Jake
Those used to crack me up when they made them on the Metro. I haven’t heard them in a while, possibly because nervous tourists from Iowa kept hitting the emergency call button to report … everyone.
I still can’t make heads or tails of the Report Suspicious Activity signs around the Beltway. How does one define supsicious activity on that hot mess? Look! There’s a guy driving AT THE SPEED LIMIT with both hands on the wheel. And he’s checking his blind spot and signalling lane changes! Get him!
Stupid. Pointless. Doesn’t make you safe.
Punchy
I like Face’s idea more than John’s….
Just keep handing the poe-leese Random Bags of Anything, claiming in a serious tone, “Somebody may have lost this”. Watch the NYPD become part-time trash collectors. Any random key, calculator, watch, etc…just hand it all over to the nearest cop, and watch how soon they ax this policy.
Seanly
That’s the stupidest anti-crime program I’ve ever heard about. And I agree that the purpose is to make us mistrustful of the police & of doing good deeds. I just hope that was not intended…
I’d let the nearest cop know about a big untended bag & then get suspicious when he doesn’t do anything about it. Which would result in either finding another cop or dialing 911.
Xanthippas
Uh now, now they’ll be coming for you.
Xanthippas
BTW, I’m no specialist on NY criminal law, but it isn’t it a defense to larceny that you didn’t actually intend to, you know, steal anything (as in you were going to return the item to its rightful owner)? I imagine such a defense is becoming pretty popular right now, and I’d be interested in seeing how many people actually get convicted under this ridiculous program at an actual jury trial (as opposed to pleading guilty to avoid jail time or whatnot.)
Notorious P.A.T.
If you live in NYC, anything you find unattended should be handed to a policeman. Coke cans, empty McDonald’s bags- it doesn’t matter. It might have an American Express card in it.
LOL. “Excuse me, detective, but I found this burning bag of excrement on someone’s porch, and figured I should give it to you since it might contain a credit card.”
I found this:
There were 579 murders reported in New York City through December 24 [2006], compared with 527 last year at this time, according to police records. The change represents a 9.8% increase. There were 539 homicides in all of 2005.
So apparently the NYPD has absolutely nothing better to do than leave random crap around the city and see if someone picks it up.
Jake
The police could start leaving bits of the victims in the bags and pin the crimes on people who pick up the bags. They could zap their open homicide files in a week.
jcricket
It’s obviously because NYC is on pace to have the lowest number of numbers ever (
Nylund
I lived in NYC for 8 years. I found numerous cell phones and wallets, and like John, contacted the person and returned them. Many of my friends, including omce myself, also lost such items and people called us return them directly.
I guess we were all a bunch of criminals.
And both times I was mugged, once at gunpoint, and I called the cops, they just rolled their eyes at me like reporting such a crime was an inconvenience. And then, the time my apartment was broken into and I was completely cleaned out, I called the cops and they showed up only to accused ME of robbing my own apartment before promptly leaving and never doing jack shit calling the whole thing an insurance issue.
Nice to see they still have their priorities straight.
jcricket
Argh (bad HTML in there).I wrote:
On pace for sub-500 murders total. So the cops need something to do. Someone also mentioned this low number of murders would make NYC-based procedural crime drama shows obsolete.
Maybe they’ll have Law & Order: HE (handbag edition) or Law & Order: LAFS (lost & found squad).I can hear it now:
LiberalTarian
Jake says: “Stupid. Pointless. Doesn’t make you safe.”
Making you safe is not the point. Making you afraid–that is the point. They have been systematically turning us into a country of people afraid of strangers, afraid of our neighbors, afraid of our politicians, afraid of teenagers, afraid of our own damn shadow.
Citizens who are afraid of terrorists, and afraid of the police, make better sheeple. Sheeple are easy to drive, and eliminate if need be.
Yeah, I know. I’m pessimistic.
Mike
Why don’t they hide Amex cards in loose sports sections? Then they can arrest anyone who picks one up to check the basketball socres.
qwerty42
hey, let’s be careful out there … remember the “aqua teen hunger force” that terrorized Boston? Fortunately, Boston PD were able to strike back.
Dreggas
More like Law & Order: Entrapment
then again they already have “Criminal Intent”
Damien
“I lived in NYC for 8 years. I found numerous cell phones and wallets, and like John, contacted the person and returned them. Many of my friends, including omce myself, also lost such items and people called us return them directly.
I guess we were all a bunch of criminals.
And both times I was mugged, once at gunpoint, and I called the cops, they just rolled their eyes at me like reporting such a crime was an inconvenience. And then, the time my apartment was broken into and I was completely cleaned out, I called the cops and they showed up only to accused ME of robbing my own apartment before promptly leaving and never doing jack shit calling the whole thing an insurance issue.
Nice to see they still have their priorities straight.”
And that, friends, is why I’ll stick with my little 150k country community or big city bullshit any day. We don’t have quasi-legal entrapment programs like this, and if our cops took NYC’s attitude they’d be out of a job within the month.
Jackmormon
I found a bag on the subway platform a couple of months ago. I didn’t take it becauuse my hands were full and who knows what nastiness could have been in it. So I go to the station agent, thinking I’m all civic-minded, and from within his booth he says with irritation (at me!): “yeah, someone told me about it, I can’t leave my station.”
If you see something, say…aw fuck it.
Garrigus Carraig
Ha ha. Of course, they’ve been trying to gin up crime for some time. Two words: Patrick Dorismond.
And this sort of silliness will seem quaint in a few years, when the crime rate returns to normal here in the town so nice they named it twice.
r€nato
actually, many states have ‘Good Samaritan’ laws to prevent this very situation.
scarshapedstar
Yeah, and if it’s got an ounce of weed and ten thousand dollars in cash, just bring it right to the station, they’ll process it immediately.
r€nato
exactly. Having to investigate actual crimes takes away from valuable donut-eating time.
r€nato
now, if only the NYPD and Boston PD could put their heads together… they could come up with an entrapment scheme which forces you to pay $375 in court costs in order to challenge your citation, which is non-refundable even if found not guilty.
r€nato
here’s another entrapment idea for the NYPD:
Have an undercover cop jaywalk or park illegally. Arrest everyone who doesn’t immediately report the jaywalker to the nearest police officer.
Dreggas
Fixed. Amazing that this shit is going on, bet it’s all legal under the PATRIOT act though…
r€nato
I think I was confusing the Boston PD with the DC police.
ThymeZone
The most amazing thing to me about this clusterfuck idea is that Rudy Giuliani didn’t put it into operation.
The Other Steve
Wow, this is a stupid waste of police resources.
Tax Analyst
Well, you see, that’s the beauty of a program like this. Police & District Attorneys know that Poor People are often unaware of their actual rights and also do not possess enough cash or material collateral for bail or to hire an adequate attorney. So often they will accept “deals” and plead guilty to “lesser charges” (a fine distinction when you have done nothing wrong in the first place, eh?). Up goes the DA’s conviction rate…promotion and perhaps, dare I say, IMPORTANT POLITICAL OFFICE may suddenly appear a feasible possibility in their future.
You can understand how any amoral weasel could easily be swayed by the possibilities.
RSA
I guess staging reenactments of Kitty Genovese would be in poor taste?
HyperIon
very good film. but i dispute your language.
this is where we are taking ourselves.
Out There
A few years ago I found an envelope with money in it. I turned it in to the local police. I was told that if no one claimed it in 30 days it was mine. When I checked back 30 days later they said it had been claimed. When I asked who it had belonged to, their answer was “It was none of my business”. I am willing to bet that they kept it and spent it themself.
RSA
Kinda off-topic, but I’m happy to read that there are lots of good Samaritans among BJ commenters. Once my wife lost her purse, which was returned to her by mail a couple of weeks later. No return address. I wondered, “Why would someone not want to be thanked for having done a good thing?” Then I realized that although the credit cards, driver’s license, and so forth were still in the purse, the money (a small amount, probably) was gone. And I thought that if I were returning a purse that I’d found, with or without money in it, I wouldn’t want to be the owner to think that I’d taken anything out of it, whether I had or hadn’t. Hmm.
demimondian
Discussions of Christianity were scheduled yesterday. Today, we are back to our usual non-theistic blasphemy. Didn’t you get the memo?
Punchy
Did you just put “good” and “BJ commenters” in the same sentence? Steely McBeam is surely rolling in his grave…
Jake
Yep. I once reported a huge greasy box that had fucking metal and wires sticking out of it and for once did not to laugh at the warnings. Decided not to get on that train, went to the station manager and got the “Why the fuck are you telling me this?” look.
Whatevs. If a container is ticking, beeping or smoking I’ll say something. But it just makes the “Don’t be complacent, Say something about that bag,” signs that much funnier.
jcricket
Too busy himself increasing the white collar crime so the cops would have something to do.
Any Democrat caught illegally billing his “mistress-related expenses” to various city agencies would be immediately dead as a candidate. Will be interesting to see what this does to Rudy.
Considering he’s hung on this long (with the taint of Bernie Kerik, and multiple affairs already known issues).
SGEW
As a lifelong New Yorker, who has had more than my fair share of interaction with the NYPD over the years, I heartily recommend that nobody actually does this. Seriously. They’ll shoot you.
SGEW
Oh, to qualify my statement above: Don’t attempt this if you’re not white. Sorry, made some assumptions there.
Jack Roy
This is beyond stupid, as noted at length by John and many other commenters above. I will note that the definition of larceny in NY is:
How on earth the state could actually show the requisite “intent to deprive” beyond a reasonable doubt is really beyond me. Seems like everyone who got in trouble either confessed their larcenous intent to the police or pled guilty; if a suspect refused to say anything to the police, lawyered up, and contested the charges on the grounds that he intended to try to locate the owner, I can’t imagine how a prosecutor could make it stick (assuming the jury did their job).
whoozit
“How on earth the state could actually show the requisite “intent to deprive” beyond a reasonable doubt is really beyond me. Seems like everyone who got in trouble either confessed their larcenous intent to the police or pled guilty; if a suspect refused to say anything to the police, lawyered up, and contested the charges on the grounds that he intended to try to locate the owner, I can’t imagine how a prosecutor could make it stick (assuming the jury did their job).”
From the very article you are presumably commenting on –
“So far, lawyers at the Legal Aid Society have identified four pending felony cases arising from the decoys. The police complaints describe suspicious behavior. For instance, after a 50-year-old man picked up the purse left in the Macy’s shoe department, he put it in a shoe box and carried it to the other side of the store, a complaint said. Then he took the wallet out of the purse, put it in his pocket, and left the shoe box and purse behind, according to the police. That case is pending.”
r€nato
I’d really rather not hear about Kerik’s taint.
r€nato
Perhaps, perhaps not. They probably aren’t permitted to reveal such information.
That being said, I think all of us who partake or have partaken in herbal supplements, know what happens on those occasions when the cops find a joint or baggy of weed on you, take it and tell you to get on your way…
jake
Yep. This is the state sanctioned equivalent of rolling bums. And since I’m feeling tin foil hattish, it’s also a really easy way to hand out criminal records to a large number of people with minimal effort.
All shit like this does is make people adopt a fuck it attitude towards breaking the law because it makes the law meaningless. It also dilutes the deterrent effect of punishment. If you’re going to get in trouble anyway no matter what you do, why bother following any of the rules?
Jon H
Also, New Yorkers could start referring to the police as ‘lost and found’.
slippytoad
I’ve thought of several dozen pranks one could pull once the word gets around that you have to run found handbags to the nearest policeman. This may be a job for Joey Skaggs.
My first thought was make up several bags with those dye things that banks put in money bags, and leave them near patrolling policement. They’d get real sick of that pretty quick.
grumpy realist
This makes no sense. Because a) given all the warnings out there, I really doubt that people are going to pick up and carry around a backpack/whatever. Which means the best the police are going to do is get reports: “hey, there’s what looks to be like a lost backpack down the street over there.” Now, if the policeman standing there doesn’t do anything about this, like make an attempt to deal with it, a series of “yeah, we know about it” is going to simply be training NYCers to not report anything at all because they will assume that all backpacks out there have already been reported and the NYC police are fat lazy asses who simply haven’t gotten around to doing anything about any of it.
I also remark that how will the police know that all of these reported backpacks are really decoys at any one time?
Whoever thought this up has no knowledge of human behavior and no understanding of risk.
golfer
Pretty soon the cops will do this in areas with alot of minorities but instead of phone credit cards or x-box they’ll plant drugs, and some poor shmuck may get framed and sent to prison for a long time. Good idea huh? NYPD! We should lay off a bunch of police officers if this is what they have to do to keep working. For all those arrest that they made these police officers should go to hell. Its not right to waste someones time like this.