Annapolis city police department uses entrapment to place fund raising ahead of traffic safety.

Annapolis police department entrapment/fund raising scenario.........

To make the trap effective the police must do the following:

(1) Establish a location and conditions where entrapment is sure to yield a high number of victims.(In this example, a pedestrian crosswalk in a heavily traveled area with a 30 MPH speed limit).

(2) Give no advance warning that you are approaching a pedestrian crosswalk.( Heading east there is an advance warning sign about 375 feet before the cross walk sign. At 30 MPH this gives the driver about 8.5 seconds to decide whether it is safer to proceed or to stop for the pedestrian. Heading west there is no advance warning sign and thus no warning before reaching the sign at the crosswalk.)

(3) Station police cars(hidden of coarse) several hundred feet from each sign.

(4) Equip an officer in plain clothes with a hand held radio and have him randomly select target vehicles to step in front of. This forces the motorist to quickly decide whether to make a sudden stop from 30 MPH and risk a rear end collision or have the pedestrian wait for a safer time to cross.

(5) When the motorist decides it is safer NOT to stop, the entrapment officer calls ahead and has the offending motorist pulled to the side of the street for ticketing.

(6) When the line of cars to be ticketed gets so long that it causes its own dangerous traffic jam....suspend entrapments until those officers writing tickets catch up.

(7) When the police induced traffic jams clear resume entrapments.

(8) Record activities with video equipment to furthur intimidate victims.

Note: If each of the four ticket writing officers writes one ticket every 5 minutes

         That's 48 tickets/hour @ $80.00 each the yield is $3840/hour. 

         This scenario was used by Annapolis city police near the intersection of West St.& Parole St. on 20 June 2012 at noon-time. It is important to note that the motorists charged with this offense were not violating any traffic laws until being induced by police to break the law. According to Webster's Collegiate Dictionary the definition of the word entrapment is:"the action of luring an individual into committing a crime in order to prosecute the person for it". This definition describes exactly the actions of the Annapolis city police department on this occasion.

          If a crosswalk must be maintainted at this location it should be made as safe as possible.This can be accomplished by reducing the speed limit approaching the crosswalk, providing advance warning signs in both directions and installing a pedestrian activated crossing light. This has been done effectively in many other locations. If this obvious solution were implemented the city would be deprived of the $80.00 per violation that it collects from each entrapped taxpayer. The fact that it would also eliminate a dangerous situation does not seem important when compared to the thousands of dollars that can be extorted from citizens.

         This kind of practice is shameful and has no place in the United States of America. Our police officers are better than that.