Operation: Obvious Trap (aka “How Are People Still Falling for This?”)
Another day, another sting. This time it’s “Operation Rabbit Hole”, which was part of “Operation Safe Summer,” brought to you by a Multi-Agency Task Force of: TPD, FDLE, HSI, FBI, BBQ, TLC, LMNOP—you get the idea.
These headlines are a daily occurrence across the United States. People walking headfirst into an online conversation with someone who claimed to be underage and, surprise! It was not a teenager. It was law enforcement. It’s a script right out of “To Catch A Predator” season 1, episode 1, and every single episode thereafter since the show first aired more than 20 years ago!
It’s 2025. We’ve had over two decades of televised sting operations, press conferences, and memes. By now, anyone who’s ever had dial-up internet should know that if you are on an adult website and someone slides into your DM saying they’re “almost 15” and persistently tries to provoke you to “teach them”… it’s a trap. The only opportunity here is an opportunity to get arrested.
At this point, it’s the digital equivalent of getting an email from a “Barrister Ibeh Nwankwo” in Nigeria who just happens to be in charge of a $17 million inheritance from a long-lost uncle you’ve never heard of. You wouldn’t reply to that (we hope), so why are people still taking the bait in an obviously fake chat?
These operations are designed to snare people. They market themselves with feel-good names like “Safe Summer” or “Operation Protect the Puppies,” then blast mugshots all over the news to show how “tough on crime” they are. Meanwhile, real child exploitation cases get fewer resources, because this makes better headlines.
What’s most troubling is how many taxpayer resources are poured into these multi-day, multi-agency spectacles, all to manufacture crimes instead of investigating real ones. These stings require teams of officers, tech, surveillance, transport vans, and hours of overtime, all to lure people into committing offenses they likely never would have considered without being solicited and aggressively goaded into. Then there’s the resulting cost of prosecuting and incarcerating these folks!
It’s not about catching predators, it’s about creating them to justify press releases. Meanwhile, actual child exploitation goes uninvestigated because funding is diverted. The truth is, the money and manpower spent orchestrating these stings were supposed to be used to protect real children, not to stage headlines.
Next time you read one of these stories about a successful sting operation, ask yourself how many actual children continue to be harmed because law enforcement are too busy running these dog and pony shows instead of protecting them.
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I think part of it is people taking advantage of one’s loneliness and need for love and, well, sexual release. Many of these entrapment operations are bait and switch where they claim to be 18 or 19 then later claim they are really underage after everything has been set up to meet. These officers, or worse, a vigilante group, don’t have any qualms about getting a catch at all costs and so they don’t mind lying to get a so-called “bust.”
All of these entrapment operations should be outlawed and the vigilante groups should be in prison themselves.
There’s a lot of Truth in there and I’ve made that comment myself. Taking advantage of the intellectually disabled the lonely to disenhearten the desperate and those who just want to get off is about as vile as it goes.
You are wrong about. I was a cop years before stings. I have first hand experience where someone knew it was the cops but did not know the laws were created just to catch people. Like the traveling law as soon as you leave your house you are guilty even if you stop at a minute market and they arrest you there before you met anyone even if you never planned to meet them. Then the State Attorney states in court they went to a house when they didn’t and their attorney brings that to the attention of the judge who ignores it. Also the male officer calls the person so he can talk to the female which should throw the case out. Yes occasionally someone steps over the line in these but according to SORNA there has to be a specific person they have identified to run the sting on not wholesale arrest and then give everyone 5 years on a plea deal to fill beds in private prisons. I could go on and on as I have seen this happen. I have no sympathy for someone molesting children but these stings need to stop.
Who is wrong, and about what? You can contact me directly at [email protected]. I run the YT channel ICAC-UNPACKED!
Now you understand how BP feel in America being profiled from birth til death, just for being in the wrong skincoat, it doesn’t feel right and isn’t, welcome to our world as POC.
Its all money driven each false or true arrest that occurs in Amurdikkka. America is driven by the almighty dollar and not in God we say we Trust, another American soundbite that sounds good but isn’t being practiced. Racial profiling should be abolished nationwide but it still exist for POC. So in essence I agree certain people shouldn’t be on the registry but many should remain for life.
I’m not quite sure I understand why people are talking about whether the police do or do not follow icac standards. Police routinely ignore them or they’re so watered down as to be virtually useless. Police have told me that those are simply guidelines, not real standards that they’re bound by and that it depends on which Year’s standards you’re talking about. In 2008 and 2012. For example, they specifically said in their standards that police should guard against going on dating sites. For the very reasons. Many of us have argued, namely their spaces where most people act legally and their vulnerabilities and sensitivities when you’re in a dating or hookup situation and yet after 2012, police were happy to violate that for purposes that nobody has fully received answers on. It is clear, however, that the icac people are violating all sorts of norms. They’re violating constitutional protections and the court and the prosecution are happy to allow them to do it, just as courts are happy to have done that for any number of other reasons. We are a long way from serious consideration of entrapment as opposed to the US v. Jacobson United States supreme Court case of 1992.
I fell under the 2008 standards
My advice if you are approached by someone who claims to be a minor is to immediately report that person to the site managers for removal. Not only will this keep you out of trouble, but will at least force LE to create a new profile.
EDC
You are at least partially wrong. Many times, law enforcement has the sites cooperate in the stings knowing damn well the cops are pretending to be underage. When I did go on those sites, wayyyy back in the day, I would report the person for being underage and the next day, that person who was “Supposedly” underage, was still on there. That was all I needed to know that it was a cop and cooperating with the site. It did allow me to block the person from contacting me, but it was obvious that person was a cop otherwise the site would have removed that person’s account.
(I think law enforcement thinks all of us are stupid and when they don’t get their way, they make something up with “Full” immunity.
How is it creating more Criminal Pedophiles? Should we let all felons in jail out based on your assessment?
I suspect many who’ve been caught were kid pedophiles as well, who just grew into be adult pedophiles allowed to roam freely. Hmmmm.
Explain.
Most involved in these stings never had a criminal record nor have they ever been suspected of being a pedophile. That’s why the cope use adult websites, it’s a more target rich environment and can play their bait and switch games. They use adult ages and at time pictures of grown adults, they have a sorry conversation then they say they are 14vyears old. You can get arrested just by having the conversation