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ACLU: Decries bathroom Sting

Wow, they think people need a sign to know that having sex in a public bathroom is not appropriate?
 
ponderingturtle said:
Wow, they think people need a sign to know that having sex in a public bathroom is not appropriate?
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No. They are saying that posting a sign and having a uniformed officer patrol occasionally is a more effective deterrent than undercover stings that do nothing more than pad an officer's collar count.

Unfortunately, if they can prevent the crime they can't make any arrests. Many people seem to associate more arrests with being tough on crime. I see more arrests as a failure to prevent crime.

To my Canadian eyes, law enforcement in the U.S. appears to be an industry rather than a public service. Maybe that's not accurate but it's the way I see it.
 
jimlintott said:
No. They are saying that posting a sign and having a uniformed officer patrol occasionally is a more effective deterrent than undercover stings that do nothing more than pad an officer's collar count.

Unfortunately, if they can prevent the crime they can't make any arrests. Many people seem to associate more arrests with being tough on crime. I see more arrests as a failure to prevent crime.

To my Canadian eyes, law enforcement in the U.S. appears to be an industry rather than a public service. Maybe that's not accurate but it's the way I see it.
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The other thing is that any arrests made of individuals in these acts would be much much more severe than the sting operation. They would likely be labeled as sex offenders for the rest of their lives.
 
ponderingturtle said:
Wow, they think people need a sign to know that having sex in a public bathroom is not appropriate?
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As usual, the devil is in the details. Craig wasn't arrested for having sex in public, he was arrested for soliciting sex in public. According the ACLU, "the government can arrest people for soliciting public sex only if it can show beyond doubt that the sex was to occur in public." That is to say, if Craig's intent was to go someplace private, then he wasn't breaking the law. Otherwise, half the people in a bar are violating the law. The ACLU's claim is that this sting wasn't "carefully crafted" enough to avoid capturing people who were "engaging in constitutionally protected speech".

And (while the first quote doesn't make it clear, there is a clarification later on in the story) the suggestion was to place a sign in the restroom indicating it was being monitored and to have a uniformed officer patrol it periodically.

"The real motive behind secret sting operations like the one that resulted in Senator Craig’s arrest is not to stop people from inappropriate activity. It is to make as many arrests as possible..." In other words, the law is not about punishing people in and of itself. It is about discouraging undesirable behavior and punishing violators is a means to that end. While not entrapment, it is the same principle: preventing the behavior is much more preferable to catching those who would engage in it otherwise.
 
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jimlintott said:
To my Canadian eyes, law enforcement in the U.S. appears to be an industry rather than a public service. Maybe that's not accurate but it's the way I see it.
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To my American eyes as well.

I remember watching an episode of "Cops" (my wife watches it, I have little choice) where the police department in question conducted a "sting" to nab bicycle thieves. It consisted of leaving a very expensive ($2000, if I remember correctly) bicycle unlocked and unattended in a dark alley in a bad area of town and arresting anyone who came out with it. While there may be a legal argument against it being entrapment (I am not a lawyer), it still has the same bad taste. I mean, yes, these people shouldn't be taking a bike that doesn't belong to them, but how many of them only did it because of how easy it was and how valuable the bike was? This was a section of town where the person probably could have fed his family for a month if he got a tenth of what the bike was worth. How is this different from leaving a bag of cash on the ground and arresting anyone who picks it up? Should the police be encouraging crime for the sake of making the arrest?

And then I have to wonder how many real bike thieves passed it up thinking "this has got to be a set-up." How many people are even going to ride a $2000 bike to that area of town, let alone leave it unlocked?

All I can think of is Hazzard County Sheriff Roscoe P. Coltrane hiding the stop sign behind a tree so he could write those Duke boys a ticket.
 
jimlintott said:
No. They are saying that posting a sign and having a uniformed officer patrol occasionally is a more effective deterrent than undercover stings that do nothing more than pad an officer's collar count.

Unfortunately, if they can prevent the crime they can't make any arrests. Many people seem to associate more arrests with being tough on crime. I see more arrests as a failure to prevent crime.

To my Canadian eyes, law enforcement in the U.S. appears to be an industry rather than a public service. Maybe that's not accurate but it's the way I see it.
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That depends most cops are involved in street patrols most of the time, answering calls and the like.

Now the prisons are an industry. The product, institutionalized people who can't function in society.
 
tsg said:
The ACLU's claim is that this sting wasn't "carefully crafted" enough to avoid capturing people who were "engaging in constitutionally protected speech".
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I'm sorry, but I have to disagree with the ACLU here. If I'm doing my business in a closed bathroom stall, someone does not have the right to start tapping my feet with his feet in the hopes I'll have sex with him, even if the sex in a hotel room and not in public.

Your freedom to tap your foot ends when it comes in contact with my foot.
 
WildCat said:
I'm sorry, but I have to disagree with the ACLU here. If I'm doing my business in a closed bathroom stall, someone does not have the right to start tapping my feet with his feet in the hopes I'll have sex with him, even if the sex in a hotel room and not in public.

Your freedom to tap your foot ends when it comes in contact with my foot.
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Well, if I remember the original story correctly, contact isn't part of the code. As far as I know it's just tapping your feet on the floor that is the signal. It doesn't make a whole lot of sense to have a surreptitious signal that is going to make those who aren't in on it think you're a pervert. It would be like the JREF secret member greeting being "****?"
 
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WildCat said:
But Craig made contact, he claims it was incidental due to his "wide stance".
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That may be. As far as I know, though, it isn't standard.

Keep in mind that very often someone who is actually guilty of committing the crime he is accused of is let go if the police violated his rights in the arrest or obtaining of evidence. "Fruit of the poisoned tree" I think it's called in legal parlance.

The ACLU's position is that the method use to catch him is unconstitutional which makes his arrest a violation of his rights. Whether he is actually guilty or not doesn't matter.
 
tsg said:
The ACLU's position is that the method use to catch him is unconstitutional which makes his arrest a violation of his rights.
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If he hadn't made contact with the cop I would agree.
 
WildCat said:
If he hadn't made contact with the cop I would agree.
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Except that the cop was only in there for the purpose of, what the ACLU calls, an unconstitutional sting operation. Had it been a private citizen, or even an off-duty cop, it would be a different kettle of fish. But that isn't the case here. The police don't get to violate the rights of citizens even if it does result in the arrest of an actual criminal.
 
Who is in charge of the ACLU? Can't they think of something better to do than this? I wonder if they're not just taking this on because they're often accused of being too left and so they're helping out a guy on the right to balance things out.

Do you really need to put up a sign? And how exactly is a cop patrolling restrooms going to help? Is the cop going to stay in the bathroom for 20 minutes and look under the stalls to see if anyone is tapping their shoes? How many cops is this going to take? There are about a million public restrooms. Frankly the ACLU recommendation sounds ridiculous to me and I sometime wonder who is making the decisions over there.

I would guess that the single most effective thing done lately to prevent bad behavior in public restrooms is this whole Senator Craig incident and the publicity around it. And I'm not familiar with the ethos in the gay community but if this behavior isn't very strongly condemned there then they deserve some of the grief that people give them.

If you want to start a private club where people sign up and then are anonymously assigned a sex partner then go ahead and do it, but people using the facilities in public restrooms shouldn't be subjected to that and I have no problem with anyone doing so getting arrested. In fact, from what I read this guy Craig got off with almost no punishment (other than the public embarrassment I mean...but no legal punishment).

The general problem...and forgive my raving but I've gotten riled up...but the general problem is people acting like asses (we'll see if that gets asterisked out). Just don't be an ass, with respect to this or a hundred other issues, and the world will be a better place. Use your common sense before acting.
 
Number Six said:
Who is in charge of the ACLU? Can't they think of something better to do than this? I wonder if they're not just taking this on because they're often accused of being too left and so they're helping out a guy on the right to balance things out.

Do you really need to put up a sign? And how exactly is a cop patrolling restrooms going to help? Is the cop going to stay in the bathroom for 20 minutes and look under the stalls to see if anyone is tapping their shoes? How many cops is this going to take? There are about a million public restrooms. Frankly the ACLU recommendation sounds ridiculous to me and I sometime wonder who is making the decisions over there.

I would guess that the single most effective thing done lately to prevent bad behavior in public restrooms is this whole Senator Craig incident and the publicity around it. And I'm not familiar with the ethos in the gay community but if this behavior isn't very strongly condemned there then they deserve some of the grief that people give them.

If you want to start a private club where people sign up and then are anonymously assigned a sex partner then go ahead and do it, but people using the facilities in public restrooms shouldn't be subjected to that and I have no problem with anyone doing so getting arrested. In fact, from what I read this guy Craig got off with almost no punishment (other than the public embarrassment I mean...but no legal punishment).

The general problem...and forgive my raving but I've gotten riled up...but the general problem is people acting like asses (we'll see if that gets asterisked out). Just don't be an ass, with respect to this or a hundred other issues, and the world will be a better place. Use your common sense before acting.
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You might actually want to read the article before you go off, forgive the pun, half-cocked.
 
tsg said:
Except that the cop was only in there for the purpose of, what the ACLU calls, an unconstitutional sting operation.
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I think the ACLU is way off on this one. I hate using public bathrooms as it is (and it will take a real emergency to get me to squat in one), having to deal with come-ons from creeps tapping my feet should not be part of the equation.
 
WildCat said:
I think the ACLU is way off on this one. I hate using public bathrooms as it is (and it will take a real emergency to get me to squat in one), having to deal with come-ons from creeps tapping my feet should not be part of the equation.
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Your aversions to public restrooms notwithstanding, I'm not saying that the ACLU is necessarily correct, but even if they are it doesn't necessarily defend Craig's behavior. All they are saying is that the manner in which he was caught is unconstitutional. It means the police got sloppy. It doesn't mean Craig did nothing wrong.

I'm sure if you were in that restroom and got arrested for tapping your feet, completely unaware of the significance of the action, you would be singing a different tune.
 
Quite aside from the legality/illegality of the "operation", I wonder what Craig makes of all this?
Seems to me the last thing this vocally anti-homosexual "family values" senator would want is the ACLU jumping onto his right to solicit homosexual encounters in a men's room......
I wonder if some of the ACLU attorneys are having a bit of a chuckle...
 
tsg said:
Well, if I remember the original story correctly, contact isn't part of the code. As far as I know it's just tapping your feet on the floor that is the signal. It doesn't make a whole lot of sense to have a surreptitious signal that is going to make those who aren't in on it think you're a pervert. It would be like the JREF secret member greeting being "******?"
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From the things earlier the contact is important as it shows that they are not just tapping their foot listening to their MP3 Player.
 
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Bikewer said:
Quite aside from the legality/illegality of the "operation", I wonder what Craig makes of all this?
Seems to me the last thing this vocally anti-homosexual "family values" senator would want is the ACLU jumping onto his right to solicit homosexual encounters in a men's room......
I wonder if some of the ACLU attorneys are having a bit of a chuckle...
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My thoughts exactly. I also wonder what Craig would have said a year ago about policing public areas that are supposed to be gay quickie hot-spots...
 
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