Cameras, Cops and the Business of Public Shame
Primetime, the new film in theaters from director Lance Oppenheim starring Robert Pattinson as Chris Hansen, looks back at To Catch a Predator — the television phenomenon that turned undercover investigations into a form of entertainment, complete with cameras, confrontation, catchphrases and a national audience watching suspects get publicly exposed.
But “To Catch a Predator” stopped being television show and has become a law-enforcement model. Polk County Sheriff Grady Judd has made high-profile undercover operations targeting people believed to be seeking sex with minors a prominent part of his department’s public-facing law-enforcement strategy. His office continues to publicize these operations with names, photographs, charges and highly produced press conferences.
To be clear, FAC is not defending anyone who commits a crime against a child. The issue is what happens when the line between law enforcement and public spectacle becomes increasingly difficult to see.
To Catch a Predator taught America that there was an audience for the spectacle of the “predator” being caught and many law-enforcement agencies learned that there was an audience for it, too. And once the cameras arrive, the incentives can change. Justice is supposed to be a legal process, not a television genre.
There is also a broader question about the tactics sometimes used when law enforcement knows that a high-profile arrest makes for a better headline and an even better press conference. Undercover operations can involve baiting, steering conversations, introducing increasingly explicit subjects or conduct, and actively guiding an interaction toward the criminal theory investigators are trying to establish — rather than simply observing conduct that was already underway.
None of that automatically makes an investigation unlawful, and undercover policing can be a legitimate investigative tool. But when the same operation is packaged for maximum publicity, the public deserves to ask where legitimate investigation ends and manufactured spectacle begins. A person who has not yet committed a crime can be drawn deeper into an interaction by an undercover officer; a conversation can be steered toward conduct that was not initially contemplated; and an arrest can then be presented to the cameras as though investigators merely stumbled upon an already-formed criminal intent. That distinction matters, because the press conference shows the audience the arrest — not everything that happened before the handcuffs went on.
Primetime is a movie about television, and it should be viewed through that lens. But it also offers an opportunity to consider what happens when public shaming becomes institutionalized, packaged, and promoted as part of the machinery of law enforcement. When arrests become content and press conferences become performances, we should stop and ask whether we are still talking about public safety — or whether we have turned law enforcement into the show, scripted and designed to generate headlines, elevate the profiles of the people running it, and build public and political support for more funding and more operations.
Discover more from Florida Action Committee (FAC)
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
Here is how they have misled everybody with these sting operations that have nothing to do with trying to protect kids from any real online risks or threats.
1) They claim that the men knew they were talking to a minor and meeting a minor, because “he was told”.
2) They claim the man willingly continued the conversation “believing” this was a minor.
3) They claim the man traveled to meet what he believed to be a minor he would be meeting for sex.
Here are the problems with that. This shows how they’ve been misapplying these laws – to create these fake crimes.
1) Being told that it is a minor does not mean he believed it, even if he played along with the narrative they presented. He cannot fully believe something he is told to believe, especially when what he is told to believe is inconsistent with reality. (In this case: a minor going out of their way to find random adult male strangers online to engage with sexually – and sometimes those minors are as young as 13 or 12 or even younger).
He does not fully believe it until he goes there and sees it for himself. Once he shows up and is arrested (or confronted by vigilantes) now he fully believes that it WAS an actual minor.
By arresting him or shaming him for “trying to meet a minor”, he has now been made to believe that he was meeting an actual minor. Why would anybody be going out of their way to do this if it hadn’t been a real minor after all? That just doesn’t register in normal minds after being put through this.
This is why men will give in and supposedly “admit” that they were trying to meet a minor. At that point, they were made to believe that it had to be a real minor. Otherwise, it doesn’t make sense for anybody to be treating it so seriously.
The problem is that the law requires he had to believe he was meeting a minor BEFORE he went there to meet the person who claimed to be underage, not AFTER the event (they created) that convinced the man that it was a minor after all he was meeting. The event being the arrest or vigilantes telling him he was trying to meet a minor. They are not proving that his belief was formed BEFORE he went there. They are simply proving that he believed it was a minor. At what point that belief was formed is what makes the legal difference. And this is exactly why these cases are created and not real.
So, the questions are, “Did he believe he was meeting a minor before or after he was confronted about trying to meet a minor?” and “What proof do they have to show he believed this BEFORE he went there and that he was not just convinced that it was a real minor AFTER he was arrested or confronted?”
You see how they’re not following the law or applying it correctly?
2) He continued the conversation because his goal is to meet this person to find out who they really are. Many of these cases have evidence of police or vigilantes refusing to meet (withholding their location), while they continue to provide clues that they need him to agree to sex with them first, before they will meet him or provide their location. Many of the men will give in and provide the sexual conversation because it was their goal all along to meet anybody who engaged with them in this way, regardless of who they were or claimed to be. The goal is always to go and see for themselves who the person who has engaged them in this way really is.
This is the tactic they use to create this element of the crime (the sexual conversation) that they cannot prosecute this crime without. If the man did not volunteer the sexual conversation on his own, and the decoy withheld their location after the man requested it (in many cases multiple times), and the decoy would only agree to meet him if he provided a sexual conversation to them first (as they repeatedly prompt the men to do), then he did not pursue that online sexual interaction on his own. That part of the crime was created by police or the vigilante. That is “creating the crime”, NOT preventing a crime that would have happened without police or vigilante intervention.
So, the questions are: “Did he volunteer the sexual conversation on his own, or was he prompted to do so?”
“Did the decoy refuse to meet him (by withholding their location), followed by prompts for sexual conversation, and only provide their location after he complied with their wishes?
“What does the evidence show?” (Make sure the evidence is complete, so that they’re not hiding any part that shows they did this)
3) How are they proving that he believed he was meeting a minor BEFORE he went there and that it’s not a belief that was only formed AFTER he was arrested or told by vigilantes that he was trying to meet a minor?
The point is that these are created cases that would have not existed otherwise, and they are misrepresenting or conflating the facts to make it appear to be what they need it to be, to prove a crime that did not truly occur but was created by them.
These people are not heroes. They are simply sick and twisted. Think about it, they are promoting and encouraging sexual fantasies about kids for self-serving purposes. And then they pretend that it was others who were thinking about those things. They deny that they are the ones putting those ideas in the men’s heads and basically are trying to create a demand for a desire for sex with minors. They are trying to create exactly what they claim to be preventing.
Juries tend to assume that if someone told you they were underage, you believed them.