To Catch a Predator

They should just call the show "Cockblockers"

... why don't you take a seat?

Originally Posted by awcollin

Click to expand...

And the SWAT team takedowns of these guys on the way out is amazingly high on the Unintentional Comedy Meter.

So true.

In most of the cases, I don't feel sorry for these guys... they're getting what they deserve. Particularly when you find out that, pathetic and sad and scared as most of them sound, they're repeat offenders with long lists of these kinds of arrests. There is the occasional case, however, where I think justice hasn't necessarily been served, and where the community's zeal to get these guys has overreached. I saw one case with a painfully socially awkward 20 or 21 year old Iraq vet who looked and acted like he'd never even been on a date and they'd lured him with a supposedly 15-year-old victim. Then they did the SWAT tackle takedown on this poor dumb bastard. I suppose it's possible I just got taken by his act, but it didn't pass my sniff test.

I do loathe this show, however, and I'm glad I'm not the only one. The thing that really gets my blood boiling is the host's proselytizing and morally superior tone, played up for the cameras. It's like a perverted Senate hearing. It's the kind of thing that gets people worked up about journalists these days... they're supposed to report the world, even expose the world, but too many are in it with haughty aims to "change" the world, and usually have their own egos too tied up in the whole deal. Chris Hansen and this show pretty much are a microcosm of this tendency.

Vey good article in Esquire about the show. http://www.esquire.com/features/predator0907

I don't see why you guys care about entrapment. **** that. These guys should not be committing these crimes in the first place.

Originally Posted by mrpologuy

Click to expand...

**** that. These guys should not be committing these crimes in the first place.

+1. I don't feel bad about liking the show either. I enjoy watching bad people get what's coming to them - that seems a lot less morally reprehensible to me than most "reality" shows where the winning contestants are the ones who do the best job of lying, cheating, and backstabbing.

Plus some of the stuff is just plain hilarious - like this guy who got busted twice on two different shows:



Oops!!

Originally Posted by HomerJ

Click to expand...

Vey good article in Esquire about the show. http://www.esquire.com/features/predator0907
Just came in here to say the same thing. A thought experiment: has a crime actually been committed?

Originally Posted by mrpologuy

Click to expand...

I don't see why you guys care about entrapment. **** that. These guys should not be committing these crimes in the first place.

That's the thing: would they have committed the crimes were they not coerced into it?

Originally Posted by hi-val

Click to expand...

A thought experiment: has a crime actually been committed?

Their argument is that the crime has been committed already by soliciting sex from a minor on the Internet. The actual capture is mostly for show I suppose (and the opportunity to pin some additional charges on these guys).

Originally Posted by dusty

Click to expand...

That's the thing: would they have committed the crimes were they not coerced into it? Their argument is that the crime has been committed already by soliciting sex from a minor on the Internet. The actual capture is mostly for show I suppose (and the opportunity to pin some additional charges on these guys).
I have no moral problem with entrapment -- the issue for me is purely a practical one: if you're enticing people to commit crimes they wouldn't otherwise have been likely to commit in the normal course of their lives, then to me, that's simply a stupid mismanagement of law enforcement resources. However, in these instances, I can't imagine that people with these kinds of tendencies wouldn't eventually act on them one way or another. So to the extent that this gets them locked up and (hopefully) treated effectively, it's a positive thing. But televising it in this manner is perverse.

I've never seen anything close to coercion being used on that show. Asking the guy what he would do when he shows up is not coercion. Coercion would be "OMG! u come 2 my house now and piimb or i tell ur wife u sent me naked pics of u."

How were they coerced? Nobody made them come to the house. What about the ones who bring condoms and send cock pics? Were they coerced? Many are charged with intent crimes, soliciting minors and send inapproiate images to minors. These guys are the scum of the earth. They act by themselves. Nobody makes them go. I hope they do more and bust more men.

Originally Posted by mrpologuy

Click to expand...

I don't see why you guys care about entrapment. **** that. These guys should not be committing these crimes in the first place.

What about when it's you?

I don't committ crimes and don't have to worry about that. What about you?

Originally Posted by Brian SD

Click to expand...

They're poor, weak-minded fools, and I have a hard time believing these guys would actually show up at a kid's home, had they not been coerced by some lardy nerd typin leik this2 and saying stuff like "wut wud u do 2 me if i had no cloze on??" 2 try and trap u in2 cumin 2 my houes.

Yeah, I'm absolutely devastated for these poor, weak-minded fools. I mean, to be outwitted by someone who they think is 13 years old? Feck, it's criminal what's been done to them.

Originally Posted by jonglover

Click to expand...

It's a very sticky situation. Some of these guys are acting on a fleeting desire while others suffer from a taboo sexual perversion. These people need help. Humiliating them and ruining their lives on national television, and people deriving sick satisfaction from that, is not "help".

Fleeting desire? BS. The encounters take place after repeated contact between this filth and the people who they think are children. There are multiple opportunities for this trash to renounce the process and end contact before they ruin the life of a child but they proceed and and ultimately visit a home so they can **** a child.

Fleeting desire? Taboo sexual perversion? I have a cure for both. One in the back of the skull. Works every time. There's your help.

gorgekko knows what he is talking about. I like the way he thinks.