Can't solve real crimes? Create your own!

Robin Garrison, an off-duty 42-year-old firefighter, was walking in Berliner Park in Columbus, Ohio, in May when he saw a woman sunbathing topless under a tree.
 
He approached her and they started talking and getting comfortable, the woman smiling and resting her foot on his shoulder at one point.

Eventually, she asked to see Garrison's penis; he unzipped his pants and complied.
 
Seconds later, undercover police officers pulled up in a van and arrested Garrison; he was later charged with public indecency, a misdemeanor, based on video footage taken by cops who were targeting men having sex or masturbating in the park. While topless sunbathing is legal in the city's parks, exposing more than that is against the law.

In New York City, nearly 300 people, many of whom had no criminal record, have been snared this year through the NYPD's Operation Lucky Bag, in which undercover officers leave a wallet, iPod or cell phone in a subway station and wait to see who picks it up.


Although deputy police Commissioner Paul Browne says the program has helped cut subway grand larcenies by half, critics say that the police have gone too far.

 
"It's pretty straightforward that this is a police-created crime," said Legal Aid Society lawyer Alex Lesman, who defended a man arrested for taking a bag containing an Xbox video game box, a Sprint cell phone and cash. "The police set this whole thing up."

 
The judge agreed with Lesman, acquitting his client, Antonio Arroyo. "The police should concentrate their noble efforts on behalf of the city on countering real crimes committed every day," wrote Kings County criminal court judge Matthew A. Sciarrino Jr. "They do not need to manipulate a situation where temptation may overcome even people who would normally never think of committing a crime."

Law enforcement officials say that such sting operations are an extremely effective means of lowering crime rates and stopping the criminally minded before they commit worse offenses.