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We all had a good laugh at that story about the Fargo, N.D. police department snookering a bunch of petty criminals into thinking they were attending a special party featuring free tickets to an Ozzy Osbourne concert, only to be hauled off for infractions like failure to pay child support or ignoring tickets and fines. Well, Ozzy isn’t chuckling. In fact he’s pretty damn pissed off.
“Instead of holding a press conference to pat himself on the back, Sheriff Laney should be apologizing to me for using my name in connection with these arrests,” Osbourne said in his statement. “It’s insulting to me and to my audience and it shows how lazy this particular sheriff is when it comes to doing his job.
“Sheriff Laney went out of his way to tarnish my reputation by implying that I somehow attract a criminal element, which is certainly not true,” Ozzy continued. “My audiences are good, hard-working people who have been hugely supportive of my music for nearly four decades. They have also been very supportive of my wife Sharon’s colon cancer charity by raising over a million dollars (partly through VIP ticket sales) at my shows. It’s obvious to me that this sheriff has an agenda and is just trying to make a name for himself on my back.”
Then again, Ozzy could just be irritated that some of his fans could be so dumb.
Lighten up Francis…
Eh I agree with Ozzy… this really does smack of the Sheriff was so freaking lazy he had to entrap people instead of going out and picking them up like any other place would.
And its regardless of what they used to get everyone together, be it Ozzy tickets, or a free videogame system, or what have you. I am sure they used Ozzy tickets simply because they didnt know how guarded the Osbourne name IS, but that doesnt save you from being stupid.
Oh and this WAS entrapment. Its most likely every one of these cases is going to get thrown out and the Sheriff and DA (since I am SURE the DA was in on it) tossed out on their asses. You cant trick people into being somewhere to arrest them, you can only get them when they are going to do the crime anyway. This is why its legal to have a hooker sting, or those sex stings you see on TV… because those people are legitimately intending to break the law at that time, and are not being tricked into being at a certain place in order to make it easier to arrest them.
Get ‘em Ozzy! Everyone knows if you want to catch a bunch of criminals you offer free tix to see The Tubes.
@Falconfire: Do you have, uh, legal expertise to back up that claim?
That’s mostly a real question (only 20% snark), because this is by no means the first time something like this has been done and as a non-lawyer, I would expect that if such a method has been tossed out by the courts in the past, word would get around…
My favorite music-related entrapment (or whatever you want to call it) story was from college. I went to UNC-Chapel Hill in the late ’80s/early ’90s and one day while Jerry was still alive the Grateful Dead came to play a show at the basketball arena. About a couple miles outside the main highway’s exit to the arena, the police posted one of those electronic signs saying that there was a traffic checkpoint at that exit. So of course anyone who was worried about being busted for possession pulled off at the very next exit…
Which was where the cops had really set up their traffic checkpoint.
@SAShepherd: It’s not entrapment. To use Falconfire’s prostitution example, entrapment would be if the undercover cop approached a john and said “If you give me $20, I’ll have sex you.” The cop is explicitly “coercing” the john into an illegal act.
These “fake party” events are a trap, but it’s not entrapment. The individuals in this case are not being arrested specifically for committing a crime at the time of the arrest: they’re they’re not engaging in any illegal activity at the actual “party”. They’re being arrested because they were previously (legitimately) arrested for committing an illegal act, and failed to appear on those charges.
The idea that you can’t trick someone into showing up somewhere so that you can arrest them doesn’t even make sense, if you stop to think about it.