Original subtitles

Bye.

Last week tonight, John Oliver, thank you so much for joining us. It has been

busy week. March Madness got underway.

Mark Wayne Mullen cleared the first hurdle to become head of DHS. And of

the conflict in Iran continued.

Now, despite relentless bombing, the U .S. has been unable to stop Iran

targets around the region and blocking the Strait of Hormuz. The news hasn't

been great. So on Thursday, Secretary Pete Hexeth decided to speak to the

American public directly.

I stand here today speaking to you.

The American people.

Not through filters.

Not through reporters.

Not through cable news spin.

Yes, there are reporters in front of me, but they are not our audience today.

It's you, the good, decent, patriotic American people. You, the hard -working,

tax -paying, God -fearing American patriots. Okay, set aside, Hexhurst.

whole vibe there, which is very, welcome to my birthday dinner, one of you has

been poisoned.

You actually don't need to announce who you are and aren't speaking to. There's

a reason I don't start this show by saying, welcome, welcome, welcome.

Fuck this studio audience.

I wish they'd jump into the Hudson River if they don't laugh that's on them.

Anyway, it's been a busy week. I might think it, but I'd never say it.

Headsets seem particularly frustrated at the press pointing out parallels

between this conflict and these wars that America's been stuck in in the

This is not those wars.

President Trump knows better.

Epic theory is different.

It's laser -focused. It's decisive. To the patriotic members of the press,

nobody can deliver perfection in wartime.

This building knows that more than anyone.

But report...

The reality.

We're winning decisively and on our terms.

Epic Fury is different?

Maybe. It's definitely the stupidest name I've ever heard.

It sounds like a VHS tape Hex has put out of himself doing karate in a garage.

It sounds like the name of an energy drink marketed to divorced monster truck

fans containing so much caffeine it makes you shit your pants while having a

heart attack.

It doesn't exactly convey care and precision.

But at the risk of not being a patriotic member of the press, a lot of things do

seem to be going pretty poorly, from strikes on Iran's oil facilities causing

toxic black rain endangering the public there, to the continued blockage of the

Strait of Hormuz, which is causing skyrocketing gas... And while polls

that Trump's base is sticking with him so far, there are already signs of some

cracks there, given the response of this woman interviewed at a gas pump.

If you could say something to President Trump and he was going to hear you right

now, what would it be?

You're a worthless pile of... And you voted for him how many times?

Three times.

That was my bad.

Apparently, I'm an idiot.

I mean, not... No.

You know what they say, fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice, shame on

fool me three times, there's going to be a blockade in the Strait of Hormuz, and

my road trip to St. Louis is about to cost more than my car payment.

Now, as for where things go from here, who knows?

Thousands of Marines have been sent to the region, possibly to secure Iran's

Karg Island, which most people would consider putting boots on the ground.

However, Republican Pete Sessions is not most people.

The island is not...

in my opinion, boots on the ground. How so?

It is a territory. It is Iran.

Well,

I'm not going to argue that point. As a matter of fact, you're right.

But what I would say is the president has chosen not to obliterate the ability

to get oil.

And I think he wants to go secure that to make sure the Iranians don't do

themselves in.

So I think it's probably wisdom.

Is that boots on the ground? No, not like inside Iran where they're in the

cities. Wait, wait. So it's not boots on the ground because they're not in a

city? What the fuck are you talking about?

That clearly counts. The phrase isn't boots in the city.

Mainly because I'm guessing that's already the title of an all -cat reboot

Sex and the City starring Puss in Boots. The point is, Trump seems desperate.

to paint this situation as much more stable than it actually is. And on

he essentially just declared victory.

Oh, I think we've won. We've knocked out their Navy, their Air Force. We've

knocked out their anti -aircraft. We've knocked out everything. We're roaming

free. From a military standpoint, all they're doing is flogging up the strait.

But from a military standpoint, they're finished.

Oh, well, that's great news. But here is the problem with that. He already

declared that we'd won the war 11 days ago.

And I don't know if you've noticed, but it has seemed to continue since then.

And I've got to say, for all this administration's disdain for cable news

and its insistence people report the reality, they are stretching the truth

breaking point here. Because even as Trump's claiming that we've won, the

Pentagon's requesting $200 billion in extra funding for this operation, sure

suggesting it's going to be going on for a while. He's also claimed we've

destroyed 100 % of Iran's military capability, which is a little hard to

believe, given they're still somehow managing to strike multiple... other

countries in the region, and he claimed twice this week that a former president

endorsed his decision to go to war, something they've all since denied.

The lies are getting pretty flagrant here, even by this president's

and inevitably people are noticing. In fact, you could argue that the only

irrefutably laser -focused, decisive, epic fury that has been on display this

week has been this outburst targeted at him.

You are a worthless pile of...

Again, not no.

And now, this.

And now, as always, people on local TV cannot be trusted with St.

Patrick's Day.

It is so great to have you here, Chef. Thank you for having me. How are y 'all

today? Great. Thank you and happy St. Patrick's Day to you. Thank you. Happy

Patrick's Day to y 'all. Top of the morning.

Well, may the luck of the Irish be with ya.

653. Good morning. Top of the morning to y 'all. Top of the morning to all of

ya. Top of the morning to ya.

Top of the morning to ya. I don't know if that came out Irish enough, but hey,

whatever. Jane, top of the morning to ya.

Top of the morning.

Right? Top of the morning to ya. Happy St.

Patrick's Day. Oh, I like that. I like that. That was good. Top of the morning

to ya. I can't do Irish.

Top of the morning to ya, Christina. It's a beautiful morning out there. And

we're definitely feeling like I should stop doing that accent. Top of the

morning to ya. Top of the morning.

You gotta give it more oomph, Jacqueline. I'm not Irish. Come on.

Maybe Chip has some Irish in him. Let's send it over to Chip.

Maybe he can do the Irish jig.

I have an Irish jig. I can do an Irish jig. No, actually, my lineage comes from

England, so we'd be the persecutors, I guess, in that situation.

Who's your favorite Irish person?

I don't know.

Off the top of your head. You don't like any Irish people?

That's not what I said. You can't think of anybody you like?

No.

Moving on. Our main story tonight concerns undercover policing.

It's not just a staple of movies and TV shows. It's something cops do in real

life, too, to catch people suspected of breaking laws, both big and small, as

this woman discovered.

Karen Haig plans to fight the $230 ticket she got on Halloween Day, accused

dozens of other drivers of not stopping to let a six -foot -four Donald Duck

cross the street.

Then they just told me that I was getting a ticket because I didn't stop

pedestrian. And it was a crazy...

It was a duck. It was a huge duck. It was scary. I'm a woman. It scared me.

It's true.

A cop dressed up as Donald Duck and then ticketed people who didn't stop to let

him cross. And I get why she kept driving there. Ducks are terrifying.

As we've covered before, all ducks, Donald included, have a corkscrew penis.

This isn't the first time that we've used this graphic and it will not be the

last.

Incidentally, Disney, this guy hits public domain in 2030, and things are

to get interesting then.

That is just one of many instances where cops have set up so -called stings. In

the past four decades, sting operations of all types have become a major part of

law enforcement in the US. There are stings targeting drug dealing, sex work,

terrorism, tax fraud, drunk driving, poaching, and a host of other crimes,

including, as you've just seen, failure to yield to a gigantic duck.

And on some level, you probably know that cops like running sting operations,

given just how often they appear on local news.

Drivers for the online ride service Uber targeted in an L .A. sting operation.

Dozens of people have been indicted in a criminal sting operation called

Operation Hush. A four -month major sting operation ends with a Butler

man facing felony drug charges.

Investigators set up a sting operation orchestrating a purchase with the

suspected drug traffickers.

The amount of fentanyl seized, and hear this.

could kill the entire population of Louisville several times over.

Wow, is that anchor okay?

Pops say there was enough fentanyl to annihilate this godforsaken town,

behind nothing but a desert of crow -pecked bones future generations will

refer to as the Shadow Place.

Up next, we'll take you inside Louisville's new aquarium, which, and

contains enough water to drown us all several times over.

But whilst things are often celebrated as triumphs on the news, when you start

digging into them, the details can quickly become questionable at best.

Take that Uber thing. The way operations like those work is an undercover

officer flags down an Uber, maybe because they don't have the app or that

phone is dead, and offers to pay cash for a ride to their destination. The

being, ride -share drivers are subject to arrest if a ride isn't pre -arranged.

That seems like a pretty shitty thing to do.

given drivers may have been bending the rules to help someone who was telling

them they were in need.

And that makes it kind of satisfying to watch this video shot by someone caught

in a similar sting, who then went back to the same location to warn other

drivers. Hey, brother, those people are undercover cops. I just got a citation

for this.

Oh, really?

Yeah, they trapped me.

Yep.

Good job, guys.

I'll see y 'all in court. Oh, I thought your phone was dead.

Oh, your phone ain't dead no more, huh?

Excellent. Everything about that is great, from the speed at which the

pulls away when he hears the word cops, to the cop's clear disappointment, to

the glee of the guy taunting them.

I honestly haven't been this delighted to see a cop on camera since that Boston

big boy zooted out of the slide.

It's still so good.

It will never not be good.

If I die with a smile on my face, you will know that that was the last thing I

saw. Call that video Paul Rudd, because it never gets old.

But if it seems like the cops in that sting weren't so much stopping crime as

creating it, that's sort of the point here. And it's honestly the case with

of these operations than you might think. So given all that, tonight, let's

at stings.

Why police love them, how they use them, and who is paying the price. Let's

start with how they became so popular.

Stings really took off in the 1970s, as police shifted from primarily reacting

to crime to trying to prevent it. That shift coincided with a string of Supreme

Court decisions that expanded protections for defendants against

tactics, with things like the establishment of Miranda Wright. As one

noted, as the police use of coercion has been restricted, their use of deception

has increased.

The first large -scale sting operation began in 1975, and in it, DC police

created a fake mafia -run fencing operation to lure people into selling

stolen property. And officers really got into their role, giving themselves

quote -unquote Italian names like Angelo Lasagna and Rico Rigatoni. Here is a

photo of them. It is a picture that screams, the only Italian word I know is

lasagna. They even padded out their backstory with lines like, we got a

the trunk, what do we do?

To which Rico Rigatoni would reply, toss him in the freeze.

They also offer targets meatballs, telling them, and I quote, you'll hurt

Pasquale's feeling if you no have a meatball.

Ultimately, they wrapped up the thing by inviting everyone who'd sold goods to

them to a giant party where a police sergeant played Don Corleone and had

attendees kiss his ring as he told them they were under arrest, all while one

agent sang When the Moon Hits Your Eye Like a Big Piece of Pie as he put

handcuffs on them. And wow, that's a lot of stereotypes!

But that thing was viewed as such a success... the federal government

giving local police money to emulate it. And departments around the country

began doing their own versions. And the appeal of things was obvious.

As this news report from 1979 explains, catching people on tape makes for very

easy prosecutions.

Around the country, officials have had great success in court with Sting

evidence. In Memphis, all but eight of the 1 ,500 Sting defendants pleaded

guilty. And every one of those who chose a trial was convicted when the jury saw

the tapes.

Right, then that does make sense, doesn't it? Because once you have

tape, it is usually pretty much game over, with one notable exception.

And police have sometimes gotten way too into the plain dress -up part of

things. In Baton Rouge in the 90s, some cops wore blackface in a sting

operation, bragging to local reporters, not only did they not know we're cops,

they don't even know we're white.

And first of all, oh yes they did.

No one in the history of blackface has ever pulled it off.

But also, you just cannot convince me that a white cop could speak for more

20 seconds without identifying himself as both white and a cop.

And as things became more common, courts have been reluctant to set limits on

what police are allowed to do in them. As one analysis puts it, there are no

clear legal limitations on the length of the operation, the intimacy of the

relationships formed, the degree of deception used, the degree of temptation

offered, and the number of times it is offered. All of which leaves the

government with a nearly limitless ability to deceive.

And some law enforcement will take that as an opportunity to rack up easy

arrests and make some headlines.

Take Sheriff Grady Judd in Florida. His department constantly boasting about

running online stings, often fishing for arrests concerning sex offences, with

flashy names like Cyber Guardian, Naughty Not Nice 2, and Child Protector

which sound less like police operations and more like Steven Seagal movies.

And while you'd hope they targeted predators looking to engage in criminal

activity,

When a local station dug into the tactics Judge was using, they found that

wasn't exactly the case.

You think you know how these things go down?

Cops post an ad for an underage teen, wait for predators to respond, then

them when they show up in person.

If I had Grady's world?

They'd all go to prison.

But what so many of our local law enforcement leaders are not telling you

that they've had to try harder and harder over the years to trick men into

showing up. 10 Investigates has learned through court documents and arrest

reports that law enforcement is now reaching out themselves to young men who

nothing more than post an ad on a traditional dating site.

Cops form a rapport, then switch their age, and try to trick the sometimes

hesitant men to keep on talking.

They had me call them. I sat on the phone for...

An hour with a grown woman who was talking to me in a very seductive

He was 22 when he had his first and only run -in with the law. He thought he was

talking to a 26 -year -old online who even sent this photo, wedding ring and

all. But after baiting him in, she switched her age from 26 to 13.

Joseph thought she had to have been kidding, so he took her up on her offer

meet. I walked into a house and was thrown into handcuffs. He's serving two

years of house arrest, then the equivalent of a life sentence, since

labeled a sexual offender.

That really doesn't feel like a slam dunk for justice there, does it? He

an ad online looking for an adult, then talked to an adult on an adult site.

and then got understandably confused when that adult suddenly reversed big to

themselves, especially given he'd already been sent this photo, which is

obviously of a grown woman.

Wedding ring aside, she's got the face of someone who knows what a Roth IRA is.

But while the crimes in these operations can be made up, the punishment can be

very real, and not just when it comes to sex things. The ADF for years did so

-called stash house.

where basically undercover agents would recruit a group of people to rob a non

-existent stash house full of drugs with the promise of huge amounts of money.

Over the years, they arrested over a thousand people in these sorts of

like these men who walked right into the trap.

Stun grenades startled three young men near Chicago as police move in. They

thought they were going to rob a drug stash house. Instead, they got busted. A

fake scenario set up by the ATF to get hardened criminals off the street.

Yeah, they lured a bunch of people into a car under false pretenses and then

sprang a nasty surprise on them. It's almost as bad as accidentally hailing

cash cab under no circumstances, by the way. Do you hear me? The only way I'm

being transported in that thing is if you kill me and stuff me in the trunk.

And while police will claim things like those catch people who'd commit violent

crimes anyway, I'm not so sure about that.

Reporters looked into that case and found that this guy not only had no

convictions for violent offences, he clearly didn't know what he was doing.

USA Today found this small -time criminal in this case showed up with a

gun and bullets that didn't fit. His punishment? Looking at 25 years in jail.

Apparently, that gun was so old it had been made sometime before World War I.

And a rusty old gun with bullets that don't fit clearly shouldn't justify

sending a man to prison for 25 years.

At best, it should be the comic relief character in a Pixar movie where a bunch

of talking guns learn the value of found family.

And the thing is, judges may not have a lot of room for leniency in cases like

that, thanks to mandatory minimum sentencing laws, which trigger based on

severity of the crime.

And because the ACF's making the crime up in the first place, they can make

it meets mandatory minimums by inventing drug amounts that trigger long

sentences or pressuring targets into doing things that increase the penalty.

In one sting out of Wichita, ACF agents suggested a felon take a shotgun, saw it

off, and bring it back to them, even providing instructions on how to do it.

That sawed -off gun then allowed them to charge the man with a more serious

crime. And if you think, well, hold on, isn't all this entrapment?

You would think so.

But it turns out the legal bar for proving entrapment is incredibly high.

One big reason is that in court, prosecutors simply have to show that

doing something you'd have been...

predisposed to do anyway. And depending on your case, things like prior

convictions and drug addiction could qualify.

Often, all they have to show is that you were willing to commit the crime.

But a key reason people can be willing to do that is because they've just been

offered a lot of money, all of which makes you feel pretty predatory that

things can actively target low -income communities.

In California, a federal judge even accused ATF agents of trolling poor

neighborhoods for suspects.

Investigations have also found things disproportionately target minorities.

Now, one that looked at seven years of stash house things in the greater

area found that of the people charged in them, 92 % were black or Hispanic.

And when a retired ATF agent was asked to explain why they chose certain areas,

his answer wasn't great.

Why do a stash house investigation in Englewood as opposed to some other

Well, we don't. We don't.

Anywhere that we find that there's people that are willing to participate

that level of violence, those are people we're going to want to talk to.

Again, this is a kill or be killed proposition. It doesn't matter if you're

Englewood, the West Side, Detroit, New Orleans, anywhere. Any

community where we can find those violent people within that community,

we'll provide them with this opportunity.

Huh. What a fascinating off the top of your head list that was.

Englewood, the West Side, Detroit, or New Orleans. All fun fact, majority

areas. He's only one step away from adding Wakanda to that list.

And disproportionate targeting has been baked into Sting's from the very

beginning. Remember the fake mafia guys buying fenced goods?

It rounded up about 120 people, although most were not experienced traffickers,

but unemployed black men who'd heard about the high prices being offered at

warehouse and had decided to steal something.

Flash forward to 2018 and law enforcement in Chicago were using a bait

that they filled with Nike sneakers and parked in an impoverished neighbourhood,

something that justifiably infuriated community members.

Instead of y 'all chasing crime, you trying to create crime.

On this YouTube video posted by anti -crime activist Charles McKenzie,

residents call that entrapment. Y 'all baiting out y 'all kids. I think

this is bogus and y 'all sitting here trapping black kids.

It's real crimes being committed. Why do you got to do this? Put this in your

name.

Yeah, fair point. I know it's a little hard to tell what the cop dropped on the

ground there, but from context, I'm going to just guess it's his dignity.

But it is not just racial or economic targeting. Things can also sweep up

who might be easier for cops to manipulate due to mental illness or

Just look at these parents of an autistic teenager in California tell the

of how some happy news from school quickly took a turn for the worse.

He told me that he met a new friend in art class and I was completely amazed by

that. It seemed like they were having these great conversations back and forth

or what seemed typical for a teenager because...

There was such a furious amount of texting going on. But those texts

just friendly teenage banter. Instead, their son's new friend was pressuring

to buy marijuana.

And this new friend wasn't just a teenager.

He was an undercover cop who went by the name of Daniel Briggs. It took the

Snodgrass's son three weeks to buy half a joint of pot off a homeless man.

A few weeks later, armed policemen walked into his classroom and arrested

front of his peers.

Twenty -two students were arrested in the drug sting. Most of them were

needs students.

That is appalling.

And for what it's worth, their son only got the joint because his cop friend

told him he was always in trouble with his strict mom and was super stressed.

That's why he really needed it. So it seems that cop was truly living by Mr.

Rogers' famous advice, look for the helpers so you can arrest them for weed

possession. And in the sign of just how much the media uncritically lapped these

stories up, this is how those arrests got covered on the local news.

Riverside County Sheriff's deputies have smashed an illegal drug ring operating

out of three high schools in Temecula. 22 students were taken into custody.

It was like 21 Jump Street.

Deputies say during the investigation they seized all types of drugs, meth,

cocaine, LSD and ecstasy.

Chaparral High School also had students escorted by police off campus. This

picture shows one of five arrests made there.

That kid on the screen there was the one who spent weeks trying to buy half a

joint for his friend because he was worried about it.

But I can see why the news didn't lead with that angle. Cops bust massive drug

ring is a much cooler story than cops manipulate, flash arrest autistic teeth.

And it goes way beyond school drug busts. An investigation into another ATF

practice of setting up fake stores to buy drugs and guns found them repeatedly

manipulating people with disabilities.

In one case, agents set up a fake smoke shop in Portland and paid a 19 -year

-old who was mentally disabled and his friend to promote their store by, and

this is true, getting a large tattoo on their necks of the fake shop's emblem,

which was a giant squid smoking a joint, which is utterly despicable. And when a

judge later... If I'd promoted a government lawyer for that, I'd argue

it in far too casual a manner.

But the agent, it was government money that was used to pay for the tattoo?

I believe so.

Could you send a message back to, which agency was doing it?

Idea. That it's really a bad idea.

Nothing unlawful about it, but not a good idea.

Not a good idea? Look.

There is a time to be polite, but finding out agents just use taxpayer

tattoo a teen with mental disabilities is not it. In fact, I looked up that

exact situation in Emily Post's book of etiquette, and her advice just says,

fuck those fuckers sideways with a rusty fork. I didn't say that, Emily Post

did, so you know it's official.

And if it wasn't enough for cops to prey on disabled or desperate people, there

is one more way they can make things easy on themselves with things, and that

by using confidential informants, or CIs.

Basically, people they convince to go undercover on their behalf, sometimes by

paying them, but often by taking people they've already arrested and pressuring

them to work as CIs to obtain their freedom.

As this ex -cop readily explains, using these sources can really speed things up

when it comes to making a case.

If you had not been able personally to use confidential informants...

Would you have been as effective?

Nowhere near as effective. You really feel you need this? Oh, I know I would

not. I may have to watch a house for days or weeks to establish probable

My informant goes in and makes a buy out of it, and I have my probable cause in

five minutes.

Look, I will concede, that man in particular is going to have a hard time

undercover, because if you showed me that guy and gave me three guesses what

does for a living, they'd be in order. Cop, cop, and guy who plays cop in porn.

And the appeal to police in CIs is obvious. They're people who may already

known and trusted in their community, and crucially, as civilians, they're

subject to even fewer rules and restrictions than cops regarding conduct

an investigation. But there are some obvious issues here. First, because CIs

be paid or working under the threat of jail time, they can be under huge

pressure to produce whatever info cops need, whether it is reliable or not,

meaning they might well fabricate information.

Also, cops can look the other way at crimes their CIs have committed or even

continue to commit while they are working for them. And finally, if you're

thinking pressuring untrained civilians into doing the job of undercover cops

feels like it could end badly, you're right about that.

There have been multiple stories of CIs being assaulted or murdered in the

course of working for the police. In fact, as this expert points out, there

a whole host of issues CIs raise, but the limited nature of disclosure on

operations means we don't know the full extent of any of them.

There is no law enforcement entity or official in this country that knows how

many informants there are, how many crimes they solve, and how many crimes

tolerated by law enforcement by the informants that they run.

Exactly. And it is probably not a great sign that we have less information about

confidential informants than we do about how many toilets Meghan Trainor and her

spy kid husband have.

And it's not just information on confidentiality. You know what? I don't

was actually clear about that. They have two.

They have two toilets right next to each other so they can piss and presumably

shit together without breaking eye contact. That is from their old house

since moved and are opting for a, quote, knees -to -knees set -up. Yeah.

I don't like knowing this about them either, but at least we're on the same

now.

Anyway, it's not just information on confidential informants. Public data on

things in general is extremely limited, partly because they're usually not

subject to public disclosure laws. And that, mixed with a near limitless

for cops to target anyone they want, is a truly dangerous combination.

And if you want to see everything that we've discussed tonight in one place,

just look at counter -terrorism things.

After 9 -11, the FBI went hard in trying to preemptively stop the next big

terror attack.

One hallmark of this involves things targeted at Muslim communities.

And these cases resulted in a lot of convictions.

A survey two years ago found that out of 992 terrorism defendants since 9 -11,

just three have been acquitted and four have seen their charges dropped or

dismissed, giving the Justice Department a near perfect record of conviction

when it comes to terrorism cases.

But that same report...

also found that the majority of defendants had no direct connection to

organisations at all, and over a third had been caught up in FBI things.

And some of those were incredibly dicey. Like the case of these four men in

Newburgh, New York, who the FBI claimed planned to attack synagogues and an

airport. And at the time, they trumpeted the arrests as a huge deal.

We have breaking news. The FBI says it has thwarted a terror plot.

Federal investigators say the suspects are four men with a shared hatred for

America. According to the FBI, the four men intended to carry out their plan

today. The good news here is that our FBI and our NYPD did a very, very good

job. The fact that we've been able to penetrate these groups early on, they

being monitored for close to a year.

a textbook example of how a major investigation should be conducted.

That sounds pretty impressive, doesn't it? But you should know, while friend of

the Bailey's Chuck Schumer there was bragging that the FBI was able to

the group very early on, the reason for that is they're the ones who put the

group together in the first place. The entire plan was concocted by the FBI. So

I guess it really was textbook if the textbook was called How to Solve Crimes

When You're the One Doing Them.

The truth is, none of the four men arrested were militants. They were,

impoverished individuals, one of whom had severe mental health issues. They

recruited by an informant who promised them huge financial inducements to carry

out the plot, including $250 ,000, free holidays and expensive cars.

And that informant then did everything for the men, from getting them missiles

and bombs to teaching them the tenets of radical Islam.

One of their attorneys actually summed up the whole situation pretty

The government conceded a trial that these four defendants never had a plan,

never had done this before, had no technology ability to this, had no

these kind of weapons, had no access to the money to make these kind of bombs,

had no access to terrorists to come up with the ideas, had no access to

anything.

Even cars.

These four defendants were no more capable of firing a Stinger missile or

creating a bomb than, you know.

Tony the Tiger could make a bomb and frost his lights bulbs.

Yeah, that is both infuriating and completely true, right up to his claim

Tony the Tiger. Because I know this isn't the point. Tony the Tiger is a

fictional character. Therefore, in his world, he is capable of anything,

including bomb making. Now, do I believe...

The good folks at Kellogg would put a bomb maker on their cereal box? No.

But could Tony conceptually build a bomb in the universe he inhabits? Of course

he could. And by that logic, you can make the case that he was actually more

equipped to do terrorism than these people the FBI railroaded for no fucking

reason.

Ultimately, the men were sentenced in 2011 to a mandatory minimum of 25 years

prison. Although, three years ago, the judge in their case granted a motion for

compassionate release, calling their conduct heinous, but acknowledging the

lead conspirator was the United States.

Which, depressingly, is pretty much modern world history in a sentence.

And you can see just how tempting it is for law enforcement to do this,

especially whenever there is a panic about a certain population.

More recently, it has been immigrants.

You may remember when Trump and the media were freaking out about that video

that supposedly proved trend Aragua gangs were taking over Colorado

complexes. It was undeniably a frightening image.

And in the wake of that, the ATF ran a sting operation in that town with

undercover agents offering large sums of money to Venezuelan immigrants to

procure them guns and drugs. And last summer, DOJ officials called a press

conference to proudly show off the results.

In a matter of minutes, we learned this was far more than a news conference

about arrests.

drugs, and guns.

The 10 -month undercover operation produced 30 arrests, including three

described as TDA leaders, along with five other alleged TDA members. The

labeled as actively involved in TDA criminal activity.

TDA has brought its terrorism to the United States. TDA is real, it is

dangerous, and we have made prosecuting TDA a priority in the District of

Colorado. Okay, so there is a lot to unpack there, from the elaborate work

went into their massive gun diorama, to what is in those baggies, because it

looks to me like Pink Panther jizz. But the thing is, as one reporter since put

it, the results of that thing in court have failed to back up the hype,

because... Finally suggest most of the people charged weren't actually gang

members at all, but a loose collection of impoverished and desperate immigrants

drawn in by offers of cash.

In fact, when it comes to those firearms, it's worth knowing many of the

and guns weren't in the defenders' possession before the government got

involved. So the Feds basically dangled money in front of a bunch of desperate

people, said, go get us guns, and they did it.

And all that really proves... is that for enough money, you can basically get

people to do anything.

Which, not for nothing, was, I believe, also the official slogan of the Riyadh

Comedy Festival.

The point here is, the long history of police things has far too often left us

with a bunch of fake crimes from manufactured criminals resulting in very

punishments. And look, I am not saying the crimes you've seen people arrested

for tonight don't happen. Of course they do.

People do sell drugs in schools, traffic guns, planned terror attacks, and

molest children, and those crimes should be investigated.

The problem with stings is they're an easy way for police to rack up arrests

sell the illusion that they're addressing these crimes, even when that

actually be the case.

Remember that county in Florida where Grady Judd loves to hold press

about his online sex things?

It's currently being sued by this woman, who came to them at age 12, because

she'd been sexually abused by her adoptive father for years.

The investigation by Judge Department was an absolute disgrace.

The detective who handled her case failed to collect key evidence and, as

supervisor later wrote, conducted an interview of the girl using

questions and statements.

Judge Department ultimately wound up charging the girl with giving false

information to a law enforcement officer for which she was placed on probation

and also made to write these letters of apology to both her abuser and the

sheriff's office. It was only after she was abused again...

during which she had the presence of mind to take photos and video of the

incident on her phone, that her abuser was finally arrested and sentenced to 17

years in prison, which is clearly infuriating.

She basically had to do that department's work for them.

And it makes you think that maybe Grady Judd's office would have been a little

better at protecting an actual child if they weren't spending all day pretending

to be one online.

Now, Judd never responded to us when we asked him about this, but apparently, I

still have to tell you...

that they've called that woman's lawsuit frivolous and baseless.

And I don't know, man.

When you've made a literal child write a letter of apology to her rapist, I

wouldn't be throwing the word frivolous around. I might just shut the fuck up

about everything for the rest of my fucking life. But I guess reasonable

can agree to disagree then.

And when you put all this together, it's hard not to conclude that things might

actually be doing more harm than good. So, what do we do?

Well, I would argue at the very least, cops should be doing much less of them,

and ideally, none of the stings where the goal is basically find anybody for

anything. As one expert put it, if we're going to do stings, they should be

narrowly focused on individuals who law enforcement have credible evidence may

be planning to commit a serious or violent crime imminently, or who've

done so and are planning to do so again, which seems right to me, because as it

stands, police seem utterly addicted to stings, even though, for what it's

worth, Making up imaginary crimes and arresting people for them isn't law

enforcement. It is theatre.

In fact, the one reform that might actually be within all our control right

is to try and remember that we are all the audience for that theatre.

So if you are serving on a jury, or work in the media, or you see a story on TV

about a sting operation, it's worth questioning what role law enforcement

in creating the crime that they just supposedly stopped.

Honestly, we first started looking at this story a few years ago, and it has

changed... how I viewed every Sting story that's made headlines since.

Remember when that group of men were arrested for trying to kidnap Gretchen

Whitmer? Guess how many confidential informants seemed to help that plot

I'll give you a clue. It is a lot more than you would like.

And you don't have to sympathise with these men or agree with their views to

wonder if that plan could have even gotten off the ground if there hadn't

as many as a dozen confidential informants involved and two undercover

agents. The point here is...

Cops have been getting away with bullshit things for far too long. And we

cannot let this slide anymore.

In fact, there's really only one type of cop sliding that I am completely on

board with.

And I think we all know what it is.

Fuck you, Paul Thomas Anderson. That is the best picture of any goddamn year

right there.

That is our show. Thanks so much for watching. We'll see you next week. Good

night.

Thank you.